


Dissected

by MollyMaryMarie



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes-centric, Bucky MIGHT be gay, Bucky also might not be gay, Catholic School Teacher, F/M, HYDRA is full of idiots, SHIELD is not much better, implied stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 13:28:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5458100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyMaryMarie/pseuds/MollyMaryMarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wait. </p>
<p>I looked closer at their embrace – Steve’s hand held Bucky behind the head, stroking the back of his hair. Bucky seemed to instantly bury his face into his friend’s chest, gripping tightly onto his shirt. I heard him sigh, and it was happy. </p>
<p>Oh my God. </p>
<p>What had I done? I had spent the last 6 months playing with this boy’s emotions, trying to convince myself, and maybe convince him, that he wasn’t gay. </p>
<p>Looking at the way the two of them held each other, it was obvious.  </p>
<p>Bucky Barnes - my roommate, my best friend, and likely the love of my life - was gay. And he was in love with Steve Rogers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissected

My cheeks collapsed as I breathed in the smoke. Cigarettes hadn’t been one of the things that was included in my strict meal plan. Hell, half the time, food wasn’t included in my meal plan. It’s funny how stepping back can make you see what you were missing.

It must have been all the times they wiped my slate clean – it made me forget what it was like on the outside. It made me forget a lot more than just that.

The cold bit at the skin around my left shoulder. I pulled the collar of my stolen coat closer to my neck, taking another long drag on my cigarette as I sat on the park bench nestled in the bike path behind the high school, in the outer suburbs of Washington D.C. As easy as it was to blend in with the crowd – especially in cold weather, when no one took notice of the long sleeves and gloves that hid my conspicuous left arm – I had to get away from the people. In my mind, they were all watching me. Leftover undercovers sent to observe my movement and report it. I had to remind myself that most all of them were gone. That I was no longer their Asset.

Another long breath, and I looked up to blow the smoke toward the canopy of trees, shielding me from the above gray sky. My eye caught on a single person, standing out in the field behind the school, just beyond the edge of trees that I sat hidden within. 

Her short, wavy hair whipped around her face in the winter breeze – she reached up her hand to hold it back. Her long, black skirt swirled around her feet. It looked like something on the cover of a cheesy romance novel. Or like a painting.

Suddenly, she lunged at the ground and the picture-perfect image was broken.

 

It’s possible I preferred it that way. The excitable look on her face was damn cute.

Did I just use the word _cute_? I’ve come a long way in my few months of freedom.

 

“Get back here, you little shit,” I heard her mumble and I nearly smiled, leaning forward to try to see what she was struggling with in the grass. Just then, a frog hopped through the border of trees along my path. I pulled my glove off and reached down – with my right hand, I didn’t want to kill it.

“Did you lose this?” I called, stepping out from the trees, frog in hand. She spun around quickly, her cheeks flushed pink from the cold wind. She wore that type of glasses that had the big, plastic frame over the top and as she looked me over, she pushed her dark hair behind her ear. Her eyes were blue, but not sky blue. Not like mine. It was a deeper blue. Bottom of the ocean blue. I tried to keep a slight smile on my face as I approached. It was hard – I hadn’t put effort into a smile for longer than I could remember. Finally, she noticed the squirming, slimy creature I was holding in my hand.

“Yes!” she shouted, though I only stood a few feet from her. Both her hands shot out and grabbed hold of the amphibian I was holding, her cold fingers brushing against my still warm hand. “This is the last one,” she sighed in relief.

I just looked at her, not entirely sure if I was meant to stay and chat or retreat back to the safety of my park bench. I had become socially awkward in my years of isolation.

“Last one?” I repeated her phrase, indicating that she should continue talking, if she wanted. She might want to run screaming. My long, dirty hair hung down into my eyes, dark and drooping from lack of sleep – or lack of a place to sleep – and I just realized the cigarette I had been puffing on still dangled from my lips. I probably looked like a serial killer. Really not that far from the truth.

“Some wanna-be animal rights activist let all my dissection frogs escape,” she huffed, pushing stray hairs out of her face. “I can understand the sympathy, really, but that’s what they’re for. Dissection, experimentation, and observation.”

Dissection, experimentation, and observation. Sounded a lot like my life. I tried to ignore the empty pang in my chest as she spoke coolly about the frogs. I tried to dissociate them from me. I wasn’t a biology lab experiment.

 

Goddammit. I really was, though.

 

“Right,” I stammered, my throat suddenly feeling very full. I tried to swallow it down, but it just choked me up. I cleared my throat, but it only induced coughing.

“Are you alright?” she asked, patting me hard on the back.

“Fine, yeah,” I wheezed with a wave, leaning over with one hand on my knee.

“Come in and get some water,” she offered. “Or coffee. It’s disgusting, but it’s warm.” I looked up at her and she was smiling.

 

Was she serious? She was going to let _me_ around children?

 

“I can’t,” I replied, still working on clearing my throat and not succeeding.

“It’s too late for that,” she said, grabbing my left bicep before I could react. Her eyes widened a bit before I was able to pull away from her hands, but she said nothing.

“I’m sorry. I really can’t,” I repeated, subconsciously rubbing my right hand over the spot where she had held my left arm. Not like I could feel it.

“It’s Grace. My name’s Grace,” she said, not extending her hand for me to shake.

“James,” I said, going with what I had been recently told was my first name. I opted out of my evidently more common nickname. Bucky was a name that people usually remembered. People other than me.

\--------------------------

It was a prosthesis. His left arm. I pretended not to notice – he seemed almost self-conscious about it – but I was sure he had noticed my initial reaction. I shouldn’t have been so impulsive. I shouldn’t have tried to force him to come with me.

But I didn’t want him to leave. Sure, there was something odd about him, but it was heavily outweighed with how gorgeous he was. Those bright blue eyes underneath that long, dark hair, cigarette dangling carelessly between his pink lips. Though, his eyes slouched, like he hadn’t slept in days – the darks circles underneath them practically looked like he had been smudged with wet mascara. Still, that mischievous half-grin on his face when I claimed my frog prize was damn cute. It was almost familiar.

It wasn’t just that he was secretly gorgeous – I say secretly because most people would probably pass him on the street and never looked twice at him. It wasn’t just his looks. I wanted him to stay because of how despondent he looked. Like his whole world had recently crashed down around him and he had no one to help him pick it back up. I knew exactly how that felt from when I lost my parents. Maybe he just needed someone to talk to.

James. It was perfect. Like James Dean. Everything about him looked like he had stepped out of a time machine – even his blue military-style coat was old-fashioned. Like something out of the Smithsonian. In fact, I was almost sure it must have been a replica, because I was positive that I had seen a jacket _just_ like it actually at the Smithsonian, on the field trip we had taken in the beginning of the term.  

Sure, I was a biology teacher. That didn’t mean that history wasn’t interesting and exciting to me. Especially history revolving around Captain America. He was like a living fossil. No, _literally_ a living fossil. I mean, they dug him out of the ice like a freaking woolly mammoth, for God’s sake. The things he could tell us about World War II, about living in 1943, about the serum they had used on him – that was priceless information.

But getting back to James. How could I make him stay? Better question – why did I want him to stay so desperately? He was a total stranger, hanging out in the woods behind my high school. Not to mention that, by the way he was built, it looked like he could kill me in an instant, probably by snapping my neck between his fingers.

 

Or between his thighs. Jesus, when he shifted his weight, I was afraid the whole planet might tilt in that direction. God, I’ve been single way too long.

Obviously, if I’m ogling the thighs of strange men.

 

“Well, the coffee is always free,” I said with a smile.

“Maybe another time,” he said, that half-smile appearing, his lips barely holding onto the cigarette between them. As if suddenly remembering it was there, he reached up and held it between his thumb and forefinger and took one last, long drag. His cheeks caved in as he inhaled and his jaw tightened as the smoke trickled out between his lips. 

 

How was it this hot in mid-December? Just me? Okay, just me, then.

 

“It was good to meet you. James,” I paused slightly before saying his name, wondering if I could possibly be having even close to a similar effect on him. Evidently not, if he was turning me down. He smiled slightly before turning.

“Likewise,” he replied softly as he made his way back toward the bike trail, which led back toward the main road, flicking his cigarette into the dirt on the way.

I huffed softly, reaching up to adjust my glasses, only to realize I was still holding a frog in that hand. There was slime all over my lens.

\-------------------------- 

My boots hit the pavement hard as I stepped onto the street from the bike path. I pulled my hand up to my face and rubbed it into the stubble on my chin. Why had I turned her down? I was obviously attracted to her.

But did I _deserve_ a girl like her? A Catholic high school teacher? A _beautiful_ high school teacher. Was that what I was doing? Sabotaging myself as a form of punishment?

Maybe I was just being cautious. After all, yeah, Captain America took down Hydra at SHIELD headquarters, but Hydra was still everywhere. Sure, my primary handler was dead, but he wasn’t my only one. I just hoped they were busy enough with trying to rebuild their mainframe that I had gotten lost in the demolition dust.

Still, I couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t a possibility. And as long as there was a chance that Hydra would come after me, there was no way I was going to knowingly endanger someone who had nothing to do with it. I had already taken enough lives with my own hands – I wasn’t going to be responsible for another.

Especially not hers. She didn’t have to even speak to me beyond our exchanges over the frog. She certainly didn’t have to invite me in from the cold for a hot cup of coffee. She didn’t have to smile at me the way she had.

 

God, why had I turned her down?

 

Right. Self-sacrifice. This was a first for me. Usually people used me for personal gain. Up until a few months ago, I didn’t even understand the concept of selfishness – to do things that I wanted to do and damn my orders. Up until I jumped into the Potomac to save the life of Steve Rogers. Right after I had pummeled his face into bone dust in a fit of confusion and rage and some twisted sense of loyalty to people who destroyed me.

No wonder I had turned down Grace. My life was a mess. I had nearly murdered, and then saved the person who was supposed to be my best friend. The first person who reminded me of who I was. Now, I didn’t even know where my next meal was going to come from, or whether or not I’d find a quiet place to sleep tonight. I was pick-pocketing tourists just to get a few bucks to shower at a truck stop. Which left me enough afterward for a pack of smokes.

 

Not very wise spending, but shut the hell up.

 

A car approached on the road in front of me and I ducked into the brush. It was just easier than having to deal with the pity glances and the paranoia of potentially still being watched by Hydra. Like Hydra would drive a Nissan.

The car passed slowly and I stepped out of the wood as soon as I saw the taillights disappear around the curve of the road. Since I stopped working as the Asset, since my memories began coming back in pieces, my skills have dulled a little. Microscopically little, but I wasn’t the cold, calculating, war machine I used to be a few months ago.

That fact was never more abundantly clear than the minute I stepped back onto the road and felt something crack over the back of my head. At first, I was more confused than anything else. People aren’t usually able to sneak up on me.

My metal left arm seemed to work on its own and I spun around to grab the throat of whoever thought they could knock me out with a single blow. It was a face I vaguely recognized as an underling at Hydra. Nobody important. He probably got the assignment of tracking me down as a promotional tease. I squeezed slightly onto the guy’s neck, feeling the familiar seeping of blood down the back of my head.

Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t had a meal in 2 days. Maybe my strength was fading as well as my skills. Whatever it was didn’t matter much, as I let the guy fall from my hand, my eyes were suddenly unable to focus. Dizziness was an understatement.

As I went to my knee, another guy – someone higher up the food chain in Hydra – came around from behind me, holding an empty syringe between his fingers, his thumb still on the plunger. I steadied myself, placing my metal fist onto the ground.

“Take it easy, Soldier,” he said, with a revolting smile, as he rubbed his hand over my forehead. I jerked away from him, but my reaction time was surprisingly slow. I wondered why they even needed to inject me with whatever it was that was coursing through my system. Evidently, Pierce took my safe word to the grave with him. Which was fine with me – it would make it that much harder for them to shut me down.

Still, this drug seemed to be doing half the trick, whatever it was. The creepy guy with the syringe was still running his hands over my hair, waiting for this drug to knock me out completely so they could move me.

I started to wonder if this was their order at all, because they weren’t very good at their jobs. Apparently, no one had told them about the super-soldier serum I had been given in the very beginning, back when they pulled me from the ravine in 1944. Drugs don’t really metabolize in my system the way they do in other people. I just needed a minute. My incompetent non-handler didn’t seem to realize that I was just waiting to get my faculties back, or that they wouldn’t take very long to return.

In only a few seconds, my vision was clearer – not normal, but better. I took this opportunity to jerk my left arm up underneath the chin of the one playing with my hair and he flew back – surely 20 feet. I hadn’t really held back, so it was possible that I had just killed him. But I wasn’t feeling 110%, so he might’ve still been alive. The younger guy in front of me went pale, so I left him alone.

Unsure of where else to go, I stumbled – seemingly drunkenly – back toward the high school. If I was lucky, Grace would still be out in the yard and I could hopefully ask her to get me some gauze to wrap my head wound. Again, she might run screaming.

Trying to walk as quickly as possible, I tripped several times over the uneven bike trail, eventually making it back to the park bench where I met her. In my exhaustion, I threw myself backward onto it and found myself unable to sit back up. Grace wasn’t anywhere that I could see her.

Hopefully, I had killed that guy on the street. Hopefully, his little sidekick wouldn’t come looking for revenge. Hopefully, I could just get some sleep.

\--------------------------

“Don’t forget!” I shouted, clapping my hands together. “Quiz on Monday over the frog dissection you just completed. Have a good weekend!” I called to my students as they filed from the classroom. When the last one was out, I sunk back into my chair.

It had been a long day. It wouldn’t have been so long if I hadn’t spent most of the time my students were doing their dissection staring out the window of my classroom, toward the park bench that the mysterious James had been seated on at lunch.

He hadn’t been there all day. From my classroom, I could barely even see the bench, from the distance and through the trees around the bike path.

 

But it didn’t stop me from looking out one more time.

This time, he _was_ there. Wasn’t he? _Someone_ was there, lying across the bench.

 

I forgot to put on a coat – just like when I had gone out to capture the frogs. The wind definitely wasn’t kept at bay by my flimsy cardigan.

Ignoring the voice in the back of my mind that reminded me how James had already turned me down, I made my way – calmly – across the school yard.

“You came back,” I said as I neared the edge of the trees. He didn’t reply. He didn’t even move. His right arm was draped over his chest, his left hung down, scraping the dirt with his gloved fingers. Was he asleep? “James?” I asked, moving closer and bending over to look at him. Then, I noticed the blood dripping from the slats in the bench, coming from underneath his head. “Oh my God.” My shaking hands immediately tore the sweater from my shoulders and I carefully lifted his head to hold the sweater underneath it. The deep red blood instantly soaked through the white fabric.

“Grace,” he suddenly moaned softly. I jumped at the sound of his voice. But I was relieved to hear it. At least I knew he was still alive.

“It’s okay, James. I’m right here. You’re going to be okay,” I assured him, though I wasn’t completely convinced of it myself.

I thanked God my skirt had pockets as I dug through them to pull out my cell phone, my fingers barely able to hit the right keys from their trembling.

 *** 

“I don’t know! I just met him on the bike trail behind Saint Mary Francis Catholic school this morning and when I got out of class, I found him like that,” I nearly screamed at the nurses at the hospital, as they tried to calm me down. If anything, I was the one that should’ve been asking the questions. I wanted to know if he was okay. If he would live.

“And who are you again?” one nurse flippantly asked.

“Grace, Grace Morgan. I teach at the high school.” The nurses resumed ignoring me. By then, it had been nearly an hour since the ambulance had picked him up behind the high school – I had tried to lie and tell them that I was his wife, so I could stay with him, but that lie quickly fizzled out as soon as I couldn’t answer any questions about him. They immediately barred me from the ambulance afterward. I had to follow close behind.  

Just as I had started to ask them if I was allowed to see him, or if they would at least give me a progress report, there was a loud crash from the room that I had seen them take James into. My eyes widened at the nurses, but they looked as perplexed as I was.

Before I could even take a step toward the door, it flew open and James rushed out, a wild – and amused? – look in his eyes. He held his jacket in his hands and the white t-shirt that had been underneath was still covered in blood. The second his stark blue eyes fell on me, he reached out and took my hand a little less than gently.

“We have to go. Now,” he said, with what looked like paranoia in his eyes as he watched the nurses. His grip tightened on my hand and he pulled me down the hall.

“What happened?” I asked cautiously. After all, handsome or not, I didn’t know this person at all. With all that just happened with Captain America in the city, he could be an agent of that Hydra Nazi group everyone had been talking about.

“Where do you live?” he asked, ignoring my question, throwing open the door to the stairwell so hard that it shattered the plaster on the wall behind it. He cursed at it under his breath as we took the stairs two at a time, my hand still in his.

“About 5 minutes from the school,” I replied quickly, as he opened the door to the outside with a little more finesse than the one at the top of the stairs. Before he pulled me out the door, he turned to face me.

“This isn’t how I wanted this to happen,” he explained hurriedly. “But can I come home with you?” I almost laughed at how he phrased that. **How** _he wanted this to happen._ As if he had been imagining coming home with me all day long. I almost didn’t care if he was a Nazi, he was so goddamn cute.

“As long as you tell me what the hell is going on, on the way,” I reasoned and he nodded after a moment of thought, so I pulled him in the direction of my station wagon.

“There’s not a lot of this I can fit into a 10-minute time frame,” he said once we were safely on the road to my house.

“Give me the cliff notes,” I countered. He took a deep breath.

 

\-------------------------- 15 minutes earlier --------------------------

 

My eyes felt like they were sagging over the rest of my face. At least until I got them open. That was the hardest part. The next hard part was figuring out where in the hell I was. A hospital, obviously. Did Grace bring me here? I couldn’t decide if I had seen her as part of a fevered drug dream, or if she had actually found me.

 

Then I heard her screaming at the nurses in the hallway. Yeah, she found me.

 

Slowly, I pieced together what I remembered. I made a list. That was how I was working on recovering the memories that Hydra had stolen from me, by making lists.

So far, I had a list of things I knew about myself – my full name – James Buchanan Barnes, aka Bucky – where I used to live – Brooklyn, New York – and my birthday – March 10th. All of this, I found out from the war memorial they have of me in the Smithsonian, which also happened to be the place I stole my jacket from. Technically, it’s not stealing, if it was supposed to have been mine to begin with. Besides, the Captain’s uniform had been missing when I got there. So I took mine, too. 

This time, my list was chronological. The guys on the street, sneak attack from behind, surprise drug injection, likely one of those men is dead, collapsed onto park bench, Grace, hospital.

 

It was weird, but I felt better just knowing she was outside of my room.

 

When I reached my hand up to the back of my head, I didn’t feel any blood, dried or otherwise.  My wound was closing quickly – that was a plus. Also, it seemed like either the hospital had flushed my system, or the Hydra drug had a short half-life. The latter was probably more likely – the hospital staff had no way to know I had been drugged.

I was in a bed, but hadn’t been changed out of the clothes I had come in wearing, so I couldn’t have been here more than an hour. Still, even an hour of unconsciousness made me nervous. Anything could have happened in that time. I was _not_ going to let them take me back to Hydra to let them live inside my brain again. Hell no.

Just as I began to formulate an escape route, wondering if I should make Grace a part of it, an adjoining door from another room swung open and a doctor strolled in. I analyzed him for a moment, trying to decide if I could trust him. He smiled.

“How’s the noggin, Mr. Barnes?” he asked and I let my head fall forward, my long hair falling into my face. And I actually laughed.

“Hydra must be getting really desperate at this point,” I looked up at him from underneath my hair. His eyebrows furrowed.

“Excuse me?” he asked, watching me closely. They weren’t even trying any more.

 “You piss-ants aren’t worth your pay. Is Hydra actually even trying to take me in or do they just want me to pick off the scum at the bottom?” I sighed dramatically.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean,” he said in nearly believable feign confusion. I let out a short breath, beginning to get aggravated. 

“Does is say that in my chart? _Barnes_?” I asked. His eyes widened for a moment and I grinned wide, sarcastically. Grace didn’t know my last name. No one should.

“Clever,” he said as he reached into his pocket, pulling out another syringe.

“Not really,” I replied, swinging my feet off the edge of the bed as he lunged at me. Lazily, I held up my left hand and the syringe broke against the metal. His eyes went wide as he drew his hand back and I just shook my head. “I’m not kidding, did they even give you mission details? You really didn’t know about the cybernetic arm?”

For his benefit, I swung my right fist at him, but even that was enough to send him flying back into the wall, and he slunk down to the floor in a puddle of unconsciousness.  I rolled my eyes in boredom, but knew that I was now going to have to leave – rather quickly, since I just technically assaulted a physician. Not to mention, Hydra was everywhere – there were likely more proficient officials somewhere close. With my jacket in hand, I slid out of the door, finding wide-eyed Grace, standing there waiting for me. I nearly smiled as I took her hand quickly into my own. She just stared.

“We have to go. Now,” I stated plainly as I pulled her down the hall.

*** 

I took a deep breath, as I tried to decide what to tell her and what to keep from her, for her own safety. Hydra was obviously after me, in some capacity, and they had seen her bring me into the hospital, and likely seen me leave with her. I was only hoping that they weren’t going to follow us back to her house. Not like they wouldn’t have a way to track down her name and address, but I could at least have a few days of peace.

“I was captured, by Hydra. A long time ago,” I said, swallowing hard. In some ways, I had locked my memories of Hydra behind a vault door in my mind, and I really wasn’t thrilled about opening it. “They, uh, wiped my memory and used me as an assassin.” I tried to get through an entire sentence without stumbling over the clenching feeling in my throat, but that was unsuccessful. Grace was quiet on the other side of the car. I was wondering if she was about to stop and ask me to get out.

 

It wouldn’t have really surprised me.

\-------------------------- 

So he _was_ a Nazi. An adorable, tormented, Nazi. With amnesia.

 

Hi, my name is Grace and I am attracted to a Nazi.

 

“Is your name really James?” I asked, wondering to myself how he would know that, if he didn’t have his memory.

“Yes and no,” he replied and he was silent for so long, I thought he wasn’t going to elaborate on that any further. “My full name is James Buchanan Barnes. Evidently, people call me Bucky.” I felt my jaw falling slack, and I pulled it up quickly.

If I had been gripping that steering wheel any tighter, I would have ripped it off.

\--------------------------

Well, there it was. Now she really knew. It wasn’t like she was going to put it together – that I was the Winter Soldier. Most people had never even heard that name. Hydra wasn’t about to give away my identity, they apparently still wanted to keep me. A secret assassin isn’t very useful if everyone knows who he is. And SHIELD – well, SHIELD wasn’t going to tell the American public that their beloved and dearly-departed hero of war was actually the one who nearly took the life of their even more beloved Captain America. I was pretty sure it was safe to tell her.

Besides, it felt strange being called James. I wanted her to call me Bucky.

\--------------------------

At first, I laughed at him. “Bucky Barnes? THE Bucky Barnes?” I scoffed, incredulously. _The_ Bucky Barnes who was best friends with Captain America. _The_ Bucky Barnes who had fallen off of a train on a Howling Commandos mission in 1944. _The_ Bucky Barnes who had a memorial in his honor in the Smithsonian.

 

Dammit, that’s where I’d seen that jacket before. It was his uniform.

Had he stolen it from the Smithsonian? That was _adorable_.

 

“Believe it or not,” he sighed softly. My eyes widened.

“Wait,” I said, leaning over to look him in the face. Which was just as adorable now as it had ever been before. He opened up his bright blue eyes at me, as if to give me a good look at every feature he had. “Oh, my God,” I mumbled, swerving onto the rumble strips on the side of the road before over-correcting. “You’re really him,” I said in disbelief. How had I not noticed it before? I had been to the Captain America ward in the Smithsonian more times than I could count – I had Peggy Carter’s piece from the video montage practically memorized. And maybe his hair was longer and his eyes were darker, but James Buchanan Barnes was sitting right next to me, in my ’99 station wagon.

“In the flesh,” he said – he looked almost amused.

“Fuck _me_ ,” I had meant to say in my head. It came out of my mouth.

\--------------------------

If it had been 1944, I might would have blushed at hearing a woman say that particular word out loud. Right then, I just wanted to make her say it again, in an entirely different context. This crush of mine was getting out of control. I had to let it go.

I took in a deep, slow breath through my nostrils and let it out the same way.

Besides, what was I planning to do? Live with this girl for the rest of my life? Hydra was going to keep coming after me, especially if I stayed in an unsecure, fixed location. I was easy to find. I couldn’t put her through that. Knowing Hydra, they would take her to use against me. And it would work.

At the same time, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I just wanted a hot shower, a hot meal and a warm bed. Maybe some company for all three.

 

Dammit, Buck. No.

\--------------------------

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, as my hand flew over my mouth. I was the worst Catholic high school teacher in the history of Catholicism. Except, I wasn’t _really_ Catholic. I had grown up Catholic, I had gone to that school when I was in high school. Once I graduated from college, my best friend’s mother, who was, and always had been the office administrator, insisted I work there. And I really did love it, I loved my job. I loved the kids in my classes. But I wasn’t Catholic. Not even close.

Still, I had to play Catholic. With a mouth like mine, that was not easy.

The moment after I said it, he took an unusually deep breath – I wasn’t sure if I had offended his 1940’s sensibilities. Maybe he was nervous over what a big deal I was making out of his being Bucky fucking Barnes.

It _was_ a big deal. I’d had a crush on Bucky Barnes since 5 th grade.

\-------------------------- 

_“_ Don’t be,” I shrugged. _Say it again_ , I wanted to add as a footnote. _Lean over here and breath it out against my skin._

 

I hadn’t had sex in seventy years, and it was showing.

 

The silence that settled over the car was extremely awkward – mostly because I was imagining all the filthy things I could do to this gorgeous woman.

“How?” she finally asked. I looked over at her in confusion.

What had we been talking about?

In my mind, she was asking me how I was going to take her in the backseat in less than 3 seconds. Because that’s what I was imagining.

“How are you here? How are you alive? How are you not a feeble 90-year-old man?” She pelted the questions in rapid-fire and I took a minute to absorb them all.

“Hydra put me in cryosleep when they weren’t using my … services.”

“But …” she began, and paused, as if debating with herself. “The train.” My eyes closed slowly as I remembered the few pieces from the day that I ‘died.’

“I don’t remember much. Just that Hydra found me, and I woke up with this,” I said, pulling back the sleeve of my coat and displaying the metal that was my left arm. Without the slightest hesitation, she reached over and ran her fingers over it.

 

God, what I wouldn’t have given for nerve endings right then.

 --------------------------

I was such a freak. I just reached over and touched his prosthetic arm without even thinking about how weird it would be. It was incredibly cold. I wondered how it connected to his body, whether or not he could feel that frost where the arm touched his actual skin.

Just then, I pulled into the driveway of my tiny house. It wasn’t much, but it had 2 bedrooms, so that would be plenty of space for both of us, even though one of those bedrooms was currently my office, and without a bed. He would have to take the couch for a few nights. But it was better than sleeping on a park bench, which I was pretty sure he had been doing up until this point.

At the thought of us cohabitating, I began to wonder just how long Mr. Barnes would be staying with me. Not that I was complaining – in fact, I _wanted_ him to stay. But based on the way he came into my life, he may go out the same way. Mysteriously.

“I never really asked, with all that happened,” I said as we walked through my front door. “But how’s your head?” Instinctively, he reached up and ran his fingers through his hair. The edge of his shirt rose slightly, and I failed at not staring.

“It’s good. Better,” he said with a slight smile.

“If you want, you can take a shower and I’ll make you something to eat, if you're hungry,” I offered and his smile grew.

“Starving.”

\--------------------------

The bathroom in the hall was small – I didn’t know, or I wouldn’t have followed her into it. Because after she turned the shower on for me, she had to press herself against me in order to get out again. It was a mistake on my part, letting her get that close to me – I mean, _intimately_ close – and I had already been ready to come apart.

Once I was stripped and in the shower, I momentarily considered taking care of that problem myself, but I was afraid I might be more vocal than I remembered.

 

Besides, how awkward to jack off in the shower of the girl that I _just_ met.

 

My memories were scattered and fragmented – my sex life showed up frequently enough to remind me that I wasn’t inexperienced, but not enough to make me think that I could prove it. The only thing I was sure of in my skill was the thousand and one ways in which to kill a human being. Not really the ones I was leaning toward right then.

As soon as I pulled a towel through my wet hair, I realized I didn’t have any other clothes – literally, didn’t own any other clothes. The ones I came in with were completely covered in blood and they had the smell to prove it.

Carefully, with the towel wrapped around my hips, I peered out the door.

“Hey, Grace?” I called softly. She poked her head around the corner from the kitchen, our heads tilted in the same direction. She smiled, but her eyes quickly found other targets to fall on, until she forced them back to mine.

“You have nothing to wear,” she said with an amused grin.

“Don’t look so happy about it,” I laughed slightly as she came down the short hall with a saucy spoon in hand. I pretended not to notice her gaze falling on all the right places as she passed the bathroom door, where I leaned against the door frame.

“Oh, you have no idea,” she hummed to herself as she went into her bedroom across the hall. I couldn’t help but follow, watching her bend over to dig through her dresser drawers. Christ, it was like she was doing it on purpose.

“I doubt you’ll have anything I could fit into,” I mused aloud.

“I could think of a few things,” she muttered under her breath – I was almost sure she thought I couldn’t hear her. In response, I dragged my hand down my face slowly, raising my head to the ceiling as my fingers caught on my Adam’s apple. _God._

\--------------------------

I really needed to keep my mouth shut. It was my one real weakness. That, and Bucky Barnes. The poor guy had just been beaten half to death by God knows who and I was trying to get into his pants. Or, currently, his towel.

It was just my luck that he had the body to match the face. The muscles that lined his hips were my biggest problem – my eyes fell naturally on them every time I caught a glimpse of him. He didn’t even bother tucking his towel in to hold it up – no, he just held it up loosely with his metal fingers. Did he realize what he was doing to me?

Luckily, I had a pair of old gray sweatpants that I had stolen from my last boyfriend – mostly because they were super comfy – but I hadn’t actually worn them since we broke up – mostly because he had been an asshole and I still loathed him. I pulled them from the bottom of my drawer and dangled them in front of my half-naked house guest.

“Thanks,” he said, and for just a half-second, he didn’t turn to walk back to the bathroom. I had a moment of swirling panic and gripping anticipation, wondering if he was about to drop the towel in front of me.

 

God, are you there? It’s me, Grace. I just need the one favor right now.

\--------------------------

My fingers nearly let the towel slip to the floor. My judgment made them clench tighter around it. My hard-on was complaining about it.

In tormented defeat, I walked back into the bathroom to change. Just to spite myself, I left my boxers among the clothes on the floor. If I didn’t keep myself under control, she was going to know about it – abundantly. Not like the boxers would have held much of me back, anyway.

I splashed cold water onto my face, followed by a few deep breaths to try and get the idea of burying myself into Grace out of my head. It was _really_ not easy. In a way, I opened up the vault door that I had locked the Winter Soldier into and let him out. The Asset doesn’t get aroused by the idea of anything except torture.

 

Okay, _that_ probably wasn’t the best idea. But I wasn’t going to torture her. In fact, she was probably the one who would be torturing me.

 

As soon as I could feel the familiar numbness running through my veins – halfway, I wasn’t about to go back to being him full time – I walked from the bathroom and found Grace in the kitchen, just as she was setting a plate on the table.

Spaghetti and meatballs. As I sat down, I vaguely remembered Steve being able to only cook spaghetti and meatballs, back in Brooklyn when we had shared an apartment. It was the only meal we had for weeks. Memories like those were the ones I looked forward to. It was nice, remembering Steve the way he used to be – a scrawny, asthmatic punk.

I practically inhaled the food in front of me. Hot meals were a luxury to me lately, and I definitely hadn’t had anything home-cooked since before I followed Steve onto Zola’s train in 1944. Hydra kept everything either dehydrated, in pill form, or through IV.

Before I could even look up, she scooped another serving onto my plate. When I did look up at her from underneath my eyebrows, the look she was giving me was criminal. Like she was enjoying playing house with an ex-assassin.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” I tried to talk through one side of my full mouth.

“Hold your horses,” she laughed as she set another plate across the table from me. Her portion was much more dainty than the two she had given me. I rose a single brow.

“That’s hardly a meal,” I stated, pointing my sauced fork toward her plate.

“Oh, shut up. Anxiety makes me nauseous and today, I’ve had plenty of stress in my life, thanks to a certain someone.” My eyes fell back to my own plate as I slunk down into my chair, swallowing hard. This was why I had turned her offer for coffee down in the beginning. It was only going to get worse from here. Maybe I shouldn’t have come.

Just as I began to set my fork down, she reached over and took my hand, looking at me as if she could possibly know what I had been thinking.

“Grace, I …” I started to explain how I needed to leave.

“You’re staying,” she said, definitively, maneuvering my hand so that my fork was buried back into the pile of pasta. “Don’t argue with me, Bucky.”

 

_Bucky._ God, it was good to hear her call me by name. 

\-------------------------- 

His eyes practically lit up when I said his name. Well, when I _called_ him by name – I had said it plenty of times in the car on the way here, when I was freaking out over having a living fossil in my car.

I shouldn’t have said what I did. It worried him, I could tell. Surely he didn’t expect me to handle all of this with a smile – he had been bleeding into my hands. That wasn’t something that I was accustomed to dealing with.

But it didn’t mean I wanted him to deal with it alone. He would probably still be lying on the park bench if I hadn’t been looking for him.

This time, I wasn’t going to take my eyes off of him. Whether I could protect him or not – ok, I couldn’t – didn’t matter. An extra set of eyes was better than nothing.

Once he leaned back in his chair, a satisfied, full grin on his face, I motioned for him to come sit next to me on the couch. After momentarily analyzing the situation, he followed. I wondered what he thought I might do.

“So … will you get any of your memories back?” I asked casually, folding one leg on the cushions of the sofa, so that I could face him. He did the same.

“I’ve gotten some, already.” He seemed to smile, his eyes glossed over as he thought about something in particular. “Spaghetti and meatballs. The only thing Steve Rogers ever knew how to cook.” The smile on his face was indescribable.

“Have you seen him since you’ve been back?” I wondered. He nodded, his grin fading as he ran his fingers through the stubble on his cheek.

“Not in a good way,” he said, his eyes growing dark. “He was my last mission.” For a moment, my heart caught in my throat. Had his mission been successful? When he looked up, he must’ve known the expression in my face. “He’s alive,” he clarified quickly and I let out a breath. “But I nearly beat him to death.” His expression clouded in what looked like guilt and regret. And all I knew to do was reach over and take his hand.

At my touch against his skin, he looked up at me, the tormented expression draining from his face, replaced by a soft smile.

“You didn’t know him then, right?” I asked. He shook his head.

“No, not really. Not until he said my name. Then, it was like playing an old roll of film that had been cut up and spliced together in the wrong order. It’s still like that sometimes.” His eyebrows furrowed, as if currently trying to focus on one of those pieces.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, squeezing his hand. “Want me to take your mind off it?” 

\-------------------------

She must have seen the expression on my face – I wondered what it looked like to her. I could feel my eyebrows raised, my lips parted slightly as I took a deep breath, wondering if she was suggesting what I wished she was suggesting.

“Calm down,” she said, leaning over to reach for the television remote on the coffee table. “It’s Classic Movie night on TV.” I almost laughed at myself.

“Right, yeah,” I said, trying to lower my blood pressure, in a certain area of my body in particular. But her leaning over had raised her shirt a bit at the waist and it really wasn’t helping my situation at all.

“Listen,” she started as she flicked on the TV. For a second, I thought she was about to set some ground rules for me while staying in her house. Right then, I certainly felt like I needed them. “I’m not sure how long you want to stay. But if you’re interested, I might be able to get you some work at the school. If you want.” She said it so casually, like she expected me to live with her forever, if I wanted to. I felt like tackling her back onto the arm of the sofa and covering her in kisses.

 

That probably didn’t have as much to do with the offer to stay than I’d admit.

 

“I’d like that,” I instead replied calmly, trying to pay attention to the television screen. Very unsuccessfully. My eyes kept drifting into my periphery to catch a glimpse of her bare, porcelain skin that peeked out from the raised hem of her shirt.

 

_This_. This was torture. 

\--------------------------

An hour into the movie, I looked over to see Bucky’s head had fallen back onto the top of the couch, his Adam’s apple protruding from the curve of his throat. His chest rose and fell slowly and his lips pressed open slightly with every leaving breath. The shorter hair in the front of his face fell over his closed eyes.

Feeling brave with him being so close and warm and _asleep_ , I scooted over closer to him, pressing myself carefully against his side. His metal left arm was still raised onto the back of the couch, so I snuggled into the crook of his arm, resting my head against the metal of his shoulder. He was surprisingly soft. I closed my eyes for a moment.

\-------------------------

She thought I was asleep. I didn’t correct her. Nestled underneath my arm, her hand resting slightly on my chest, it was what heaven would’ve been like if I had actually died in that ravine in Eastern Europe. Her inviting breath fell gently against my neck and if my eyes hadn’t already been closed, I would have closed them – the feeling of her soft warmth against me was comforting. And like fire at the same time.

No, I had to put a stop to this. I couldn’t let her ruin her life with me. Yes, I appreciated everything she had done for me, and I would accept her offer to stay, but I wasn’t going to let her get any more emotionally invested than this.

“Bedtime?” I asked, in feign grogginess, stretching my arms over my head. She immediately flew back to her side of the couch.

“Yeah. I guess so,” she said, with a hint of disappointment in her voice.

 

\-------------------------- 6 months later --------------------------

 

I dug my metal fingers into the dirt, letting the soil slip through them slowly. This was better than any therapy session I could possibly have.

“Morning again, roomie,” I felt the bottom of Grace’s shoe on my hip, as I was crouched onto the sidewalk next to the flower bed. She pushed my hair behind my ear.

“Morning, Grace,” I said, turning to show my smile before getting back to my dirt. Living with her was nothing short of a dream. We were like a married couple without the bedroom benefits, which I momentously wished I could add. But I sure as hell wasn’t about to complain. She was the best thing that could have possibly happened to me, after what Hydra had done to my mind. Every fragment of every broken memory, she nursed into a full scene, healing me physically and mentally. If I mentioned something was familiar, we talked about it, for hours, for days, until I was able to piece it together. In other words, I was much more Bucky now than I had been in 70 years.

“How are your flowers this morning, gardener?” she asked playfully, keeping her foot propped up in the crook of my hip. I kept my back to her, suppressing the desire to run my hand up the length of her long skirt, along her slender, bare calf.

“Better than ever,” I laughed, remembering the day that she had gotten me this job as groundskeeper for her Catholic high school. And remembering the reason why I _couldn’t_ run my hand up her long, slender calf.

 

Because my boss, the principal at this school, and Grace, thought I was gay.

Mainly because I had _told_ them both that I was gay.

 

I wasn’t really given a choice. Give more time, I could have come up with a better plan, but I panicked. The principal, Mr. Nelson, who was ready to hire me on the spot, found out that I was living with Grace. Being that we were both going to be working at a Catholic school, it wasn’t allowed for a single male and a single female of the faculty to live together. I didn’t want to leave Grace. I could blame it on wanting to protect her from Hydra, who would dig up her identity any day now, but it was really more of a need to be close to her. In _any_ capacity. And it wasn’t like I was going to find another job any time soon – I certainly couldn’t force Grace to continue to take care of me for free.

 

So I told them I was gay. Catholic school or not, they couldn’t not hire me based on my sexual orientation. D.C. had laws about those kinds of things nowadays.

They told me as long as I wasn’t flaunting it, I could work there. The principal nervously said “ _Don’t ask, don’t tell_ ,” with a laugh, but that reference went over my head.

It benefited everyone but me. Sure, I got to stay with Grace and I got a job out of the deal, but I was forcing myself to keep my hands away from Grace. It would be for the best. I couldn’t burden her with everything that I had been through. At first, it seemed like she wasn’t aware of the nightmares. I assumed I was only screaming in the dream. Like reliving every time they wiped what little was left of the Bucky in my brain.

 

Except I hadn’t only been screaming in my dreams.

 

I woke once to Grace’s face, soaked in tears, as she softly whispered my name, over and over – with a ‘please wake up,’ somewhere in the middle.

For every nightmare after, she was there – to remind me that I wasn’t with Hydra anymore. That I had made it – through all of it. That I was still me. I was still Bucky.

Bucky or not – I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through _this_ , living with Grace. When she ‘found out’ about my being gay, I could see the disappointment in her eyes.  It took turning my mind over to the Winter Soldier for a few minutes to resist taking her face into my hands and kissing her _really_ determinedly.

However, since that proclamation, and since she’s decided that I’m no longer interested, she’s been a little more free with walking around the house in a tight tank top, or walking from her room in just a towel. No big deal, to her – I’m _gay_. It was like strength training for my will power. And I felt like I wasn’t making progress at all. But she wasn’t making it easy for me.

The other night, she fell asleep with her head in my lap while we were watching Classic Movie Night, which wasn’t that bad. I got to run my fingers through her shoulder-length, dark hair – as her completely homosexual roommate, that wasn’t a problem.

The problem arose when, in her sleep, she began to have what I assumed to be a nightmare. The expression on her face was pained. That’s not even really the problem, either. The problem is that, due to this nightmare, she began twisting her face and moaning my name _into my crotch_. It really only took a few seconds of her hot panting into my thighs and I was off like a rocket. I quickly picked her up, carried her to bed, and jerked one off in the shower.

 

Technically, it’s my shower now, too, so it’s not as creepy.

 

No, the creepiest thing was how sex was actually not the most important thing on my mind, when it came to Grace. She was becoming all consuming to me. When I woke up in the morning, I thought of what I would cook her for breakfast. During the school day, I loved to sneak into the building to watch the way she interacted with her students. I loved the way her deep blue eyes lit up when she finally noticed me standing in the doorway. I loved the way she pushed my hair behind my ears when she talked to me.

 

I was madly in love with my roommate. And I was supposed to be gay.

\--------------------------

 

With my foot propped up into the nook at Bucky’s hip, I reached down and tucked some of his long, chestnut hair behind his ear. It was becoming like a personal challenge.

 

Find out if Bucky Barnes is actually gay, or if he just wants to be left alone.

 

When he had first blurted it out to the principal, I thought it was just a cover, so he could continue to live with me and still get the job. Outside the office, I confronted him, and he confirmed it, but not incredibly believably.

I flaunted myself in front of him at home, to see if I could literally get a rise out of him. My shortest shorts, my tightest shirts – hell, I had even walked past him in nothing but a towel. Either he really was gay or he was made of pure willpower. Though, it was also possibly that he was straight as a board and just not interested in _me_ , in particular. But I had accidentally tested and disproved that theory.

Last week, I was trying to test the boundaries of how close I could get to him before he would get uncomfortable, by resting my head on his thigh as we watched television. But he was so warm and soft and he was running his fingers through my hair – if I hadn’t been so tired, I probably would’ve had a harder time with letting that go. I got so comfortable that I fell asleep. Unfortunately for me, I had a terrible nightmare about Bucky being dragged away by Adolf Hitler, his metal arm being ripped from his body as Hydra tore him away from my outstretched hands. In the dream, I was screaming his name, but my voice was barely louder than a whisper.

Thankfully, I was awoken – though very abruptly – and I realized it was because my face was buried into the crotch of the man whose name I was probably just saying out loud in my sleep. The interesting observation that I took away from that was that I had elicited a _very_ strong reaction in my supposedly gay roommate. I knew this, because I had a face full of it before he carried me to bed. I pretended to remain asleep, for the sake of his dignity. Not only that, once he had retreated into the shower, I was almost positive I heard a very distinct moan coming from underneath the sound of running water.

After that night, I’ve been pretty sure. Maybe he just said it, so that he didn’t have to leave, so we could still live together with both of us working at the school.

But if that was the case, why was he still keeping up the charade with me? Not like I was going to have him kicked out of my house and fired for not really being gay.

In fact, I preferred if he wasn’t gay, for obvious reasons. Keep his secrets all he wants, but let me keep them with him. I already kept his secret about being Bucky. Everyone at the school called him James. When the principal made a comment about his name being synonymous with a fallen war hero, Bucky had made up some excuse about being named after his great uncle, Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th.

As if the sexual tension wasn’t bad enough, it wasn’t even the worst of it. Bucky Barnes was on my mind, from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, to the time I closed them at night. At first, I chalked it up to wanting to make him feel at home, wanting to make sure he was comfortable and safe and happy.

Lately, though, even when I’d be in class, I’d look out the window just to watch him tend to the flowers along the building. I was sure he could see the way my whole face lit up when he made surprise visits to my classroom. Not to mention, my students loved him to pieces. Half the time, he was out playing kickball with them in the field instead of working. He kept long sleeves to cover his metal arm, and when he was around the kids, that arm stayed glued to his side. Every time he gave a high five, he made sure it was with his right hand. I loved it – the way he was so gentle with the kids. I loved the way he knew all of my kids by name. I loved the way he leaned in the doorway, the way he liked to watch me teach before I knew he was there.

 

I loved every last goddamn thing about him. And he was probably gay.

 

With my foot still tucked into the crease at his hip, I leaned down and whispered into his ear. “A few of the more rebellious teachers are going out for drinks tonight, if you want come with me.” There were a few teachers at the school, like me, who really only played Catholic on the weekdays. And those who actually _were_ Catholic still went out and got toasted. They would just ask the Father to forgive them at mass on Sunday.

“Yeah, I’ll tag along.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and smiled. 

\--------------------------

Her lips were practically pressed to my ear just then. I really had no interest in drinking with a bunch of fake-Catholic high school teachers. Mostly because, as my metabolism was so freakishly high, it was nearly impossible for me to even get drunk. I’d have to drink the bar dry before I’d even feel buzzed. Which was frighteningly past the point of alcohol poisoning, and I wasn’t entirely sure that I wasn’t susceptible to that, still.

 

I know this, because I tried it, no long after I pulled the Cap from the Potomac.

 

But, if Grace hadn’t noticed – and I was sure she had, because she continued doing it – she could ask me anything in a whisper and I would agree to it.

Really, she could ask me anything, in any way, and I would agree to it. Because I was hopelessly in love with her.

Still, even though I had immediately agreed, I wondered if it was a good idea or not. Lately, I’d been noticing the same face in every crowd – someone was trailing me. It must have been a very boring job for him, considering all I did was play in the dirt and watch old movies at home with Grace.

At first, I thought he was Hydra. But after a few days, and he hadn’t acted, I was pretty sure he was with SHIELD, in whatever capacity SHIELD was still operable. They were nearly as bad as Hydra at being super conspicuous.

I was fairly sure that, whoever he was, he wasn’t going to do anything to put civilians in harm’s way, so I agreed to go with Grace. If for no other reason than to make sure she made it back. Despite not having driven in 70 years – and really not having done it back then that often either, considering I lived in Brooklyn – I wasn’t really too bad at it.

So I could be her ride home. That, and be incredibly threatening to anyone who might try to hit on her.

\--------------------------

I should’ve stopped after the 4th round. Bucky was being terribly polite and wonderfully charming, as I knew him to be, but other people had not had the opportunity to witness. A few of the younger female teachers immediately became enamored with him. Just as I was afraid they would. Of course, I knew how warm and sweet Bucky could be, but everyone else saw him as the quiet gardener who kept to himself.

So I kept drinking. At first, I had thought about trying to assert my abundant presence in Bucky’s life by commenting about our home life together, but that was off limits. Nobody was supposed to know that Bucky and I were living together – that was the principal’s rule. We told everyone that we carpooled. Furthermore, nobody was supposed to know about Bucky’s orientation. _Don’t ask, don’t tell._ So none of these girls knew that Bucky was gay. Or that he pretended he was gay – I still wasn’t completely sure. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Once they found out he could speak a foreign language, their panties were practically on the floor.  

What they failed to realize is that the language he spoke was Russian, learned over decades of training and torture and brainwashing. What he didn’t tell them was how he woke in the middle of the night screaming it, and how, every single time it happened, no matter how frequently, I was always right by his bedside to hold his hand and peacefully coax him into waking up. How, when he realized where he was, he took my face into his hands, placed his forehead to mine and allowed his breathing to return to normal.

When it had first happened, I panicked. Tears flowed from my eyes more rapidly than I thought was physically possible. When he finally woke, and saw the fear and worry in my eyes, and in my face, that was his first, instinctive reaction – to hold my face against his, looking straight into my eyes, as if reminding me – and him – that he was still Bucky.

Ever since then, that was how he calmed himself down after a nightmare. He held my face and listened closely to my breathing, to match his own to it.

But he didn’t mention these things to the hot, young girls across the table from him. So I kept drinking. And drinking.

When it came time to leave, I drunkenly sulked toward the front door, leaving Bucky to decide if he wanted to take the girls up on their offer to go dancing. Whether he was actually gay or not was really none of my business, and even if he wasn’t, he still wasn’t my boyfriend. He could do whatever he liked with those girls.

Just as my hand reached out to push open the door, there was a soft _‘hey’_ in my ear. I didn’t even have to turn, he was nearly pressed up against my back.

“Hi,” I replied coolly.

“You weren’t planning on leaving me here, were you? You’re my ticket home,” I could hear the smile in his voice, and I wondered when I stopped counting how many drinks he had knocked back on his own.

“Is that what I am? I’m just your ride?” I asked with pursed lips, the alcohol in my bloodstream inhibiting my opinions a bit more than I realized. I felt him step back, so I turned. His eyebrows were furrowed, there was a worry crease across his forehead.

“Why would you think that?” he asked. He looked practically hurt.

“Never mind. Are you coming or not?” I demanded as I stormed out into the parking lot, fumbling for my keys, which Bucky skillfully slipped from my hands.

“Where else would I go?” he asked, his voice tinged with what I could only define as mild irritation. I scoffed. I was the one who should be irritated.

“I thought you might want to go dancing with one of your girlfriends,” I huffed as I fell down into the passenger seat of my car, Bucky gracefully sliding into the driver’s.

“Oh,” was all he said. I wasn’t sure what kind of an ‘ _Oh’_ that was. The potential list of the type of ‘ _Oh_ ’ it could have been ranged from an ‘ _Oh, you found me out’_ or an ‘ _Oh, did you forget I’m gay_?’ or ‘ _Oh, you’re being ridiculous’_ followed by ‘ _You do realize_ **you’re** _the one I’m going home with_ , right?’ I didn’t know how to reply, so I didn’t.

\------------------------- 

“Oh,” I said, widening my eyes. Was she jealous? Is that what this was? I wasn’t playing my part well enough, evidently. Sure, nobody at the table, or the school for that matter, knew that I was supposed to be gay. But Grace was supposed to believe it.

She was the reason it was so hard to play the part of gay Bucky. The way she looked at me when she pushed the hair out of my face, the way she walked away when she knew I was watching, the way she _breathed_ , goddammit. Maybe it wasn’t her fault, really.

I had been drinking, but really only for the sake of having something to hold in my hand – my right hand. I tried to keep my left under the table. It wasn’t glove season, but I still had one on, because it was still _much_ less conspicuous than metal fingers curling out from the ends of my long sleeves. To avoid the questions, I kept it tucked away. The girls _had_ asked about the long sleeves, and I just told them I was covering tattoos. That didn’t help matters at all – their lusty expressions got worse. It’s not that they weren’t fine-looking women, but they were _really_ not my type – giggling ditzy blondes who looked like they would probably jump me if I took so much as my jacket off.

No, my type was the dark-haired girl who liked to watch classic movies on Friday nights, whose favorite fashion was a full-length skirt, who let me live with her for months with only mild sexual innuendos, who had been downing tequila with a bracing wince because she couldn’t really handle hard liquor. But why had she been trying to?

Grace had gone through eleven drinks – some cocktails, some shots. Whether she knew it or not, I had been keeping a close eye on her. Something hadn’t been right about the way she was acting. She never drank like this. Something had been bothering her.

 

Now I knew what it was. She was jealous.

 

And good _God_ , did I want to alleviate those feelings.

 

The other girls were nice enough, but they weren’t the ones whose quiet voice brought me out of Hydra-fueled nightmares. They weren’t the ones whose face I held in my hands to remind myself that I have someone who cares about me. They weren’t the ones who still cooked me spaghetti and meatballs once a week, to remind me of Steve.

 

Let’s be honest, they weren’t the ones I thought about with one hand busy.

 

The rest of the drive home was quiet. I wasn’t sure what to say, and she hadn’t said anything in a long time. Was it time to stop acting? It took me this long to realize that it didn’t matter whether we were together as a couple or not, we were still _together_ , all the time. If Hydra wanted to get to me, it wouldn’t be hard to see the connection I had with Grace. But I would always be there to protect her – I wasn’t going anywhere.

When we pulled up to her house, she was out of the car before I had even completely stopped, to the front door before I could even kill the ignition.

“Grace,” I called as I followed her through the front door, taking off my single left glove and throwing it on the table with the keys. She didn’t even bother turning on any lights. She went straight to her room. She didn’t turn those lights on, either.

“Good night, James,” she said, calling me by the name all the teachers knew me by as she began to shut her bedroom door.

“No, Grace, talk to me,” I said, curling my metal fingers around the edge of the door. For a moment, she stood with her back to me.

“You could have at least pretended to be gay,” she grumbled without turning.

“I don’t want to lose my job,” I reasoned, stretching out to brush her fingers. She retracted them to her chest as soon as she felt my touch.

“You don’t have to be such a believable flirt,” she snapped, finally turning to look at me. Her eyes were red – I wasn’t sure if it was from the alcohol, or if she was trying hard not to let me see her cry over this. I couldn’t keep doing this to her. Or to me.

“The only one I _really_ flirt with is you, sweetheart,” I said bravely, finally laying it out in front of her. She was the only one that I really did anything for.

“Dammit, Bucky! This is what I’m talking about!” she nearly shouted at me, and I hadn’t really expected that reaction from what I said. I started to try to elaborate – to tell her that she was the reason I got up in the morning – in more ways than one, the reason I didn’t want to lose my job, the only reason I could (and couldn’t) sleep at night. But I couldn’t say anything. Because she suddenly pushed up onto her toes and pressed her lips softly against mine, letting his fingers curl around my neck.

For a second, I couldn’t breathe. But once I got the taste of her on the verge of my lips, I needed it on my tongue, in my throat, in my lungs.

Quickly, I wrapped both of my arms tightly around her and lifted her up against my chest. In response, she wrapped her legs around my hips to hold onto me. My hands migrated up her back, into her hair as I pushed my tongue through her teeth. She let out a perfectly tiny moan and I couldn’t help but harden against her. To steady her, and in order to press my hips more firmly against hers, I turned, letting her fall back against the wall of her bedroom, not letting her mouth get away from mine. Pressed against the wall, I didn’t have to hold her up, so I let my hands move back down to her hips, finding the edge of her shirt with my fingertips and pushing them underneath the hem. At the touch of her bare waist against my right hand, I moaned into her mouth. Her skin was soft, full, warm.

 

And I … was coming … unglued.

\------------------------- 

His metal fingers were cold as they wrapped around my waist, but he held me so softly, like he was afraid he would rupture my appendix if he pressed too hard.

 

God, I wanted him to press harder.

 

Months of frustration over my attraction to my roommate came pouring out of my mouth and, thanks to the alcohol, I wasn’t thinking about anything except the way his fingers pressed into my skin.

I pushed my fingers through his hair the way he had done to mine when I had fallen asleep in his lap. When I had gotten a face full of what my hips were being introduced to at that very moment.

His heavy breath smelled like whiskey and cigarettes – mine probably smelled like apple martinis, or whatever the hell it was I had ordered at the bar. He dragged his tongue along the side of mine, the stubble on his face digging sharply into my chin as he pushed his way deeper into my mouth. I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Quickly, I reached down and tugged at the bottom hem of his shirt. Holding me against the wall with his hips, he made the job easier for me, tearing it from over his head swiftly and returning his lips to mine immediately. The first thing I did was what I had been wanting to do, desperately, since he moved in. I pressed my hands hard against his bare chest, his firm skin not giving way to my heavy touch at all.

But it wasn’t enough. I needed to feel him pressed against me. In like fashion, I yanked at the hem of my shirt and it was over my head in a half-second. Before I could pull his face back to mine, he gave me a full glance, biting down on his bottom lip as he swallowed hard. It only made my lips fight faster for access to him, my tongue teasing his lips open to let it in. He obliged quickly, grinding his hips down hard into mine.

Gripping tightly onto my hips, he carried me over to the bed and let me fall backward onto it, standing over me and letting his eyes fall everywhere.

His fingers reached out and he slid them along the edge of my bra, letting them trail down to the waist of my jeans.  He pulled open the button to my jeans with his metal hand, the other hovering temptingly over my chest. His eyes were dark and wide, his mouth had fallen open, his tongue slid along the backs of his top teeth – the palm of his hand contacted my skin and he pressed up, sliding to wrap his fingers around my neck.

 

And then there was a knock at my front door.

\-------------------------- 

It was lucky that I hadn’t been biting my lip, with Grace lying half-naked underneath me, my left hand at the zipper of her jeans and my right pressed in between her breasts, my fingers sliding up to curl around her neck. When I heard the knock, my jaw clenched so tightly, I would have probably bitten my lip off.

 

Pissed off doesn’t even describe my frame of mind.

 

Fucking pissed off was only slightly more fitting.  

 

For a second, I stared down at Grace with raised eyebrows, but she shook her head to indicate that she was not expecting company – and why would she be? It was nearly one in the morning. I began to realize it was probably for me.

At least I knew it wasn’t Hydra. They weren’t polite enough to knock.

Angrily, I rolled my shoulders, pulling my shirt back over my head as I walked back to my bedroom. I pulled the handgun from my bedside table. Grace dressed and met me in the hallway, eyeing my weapon carefully as I turned the safety off.

She flipped on the lights in the living room in the same moment that I swung open the front door, gun held at eye level.  

 

As soon as I saw who it was, the gun dropped from my hands instantly. 

 

_Steve._  

 

“Bucky,” he said, eyes wide, as if not expecting me to have opened the door.

“Steve,” I replied, his expression surely mirrored in mine. Before I could react, or tell him how much about him I remembered – the undercooked spaghetti and burned meatballs for a week until he figured out how to use the stove right, the cold nights in Brooklyn when I would gladly cater to his asthmatic fevers, the relief I felt at the site of his face in the Hydra facility, knowing that he had come to save my life – before any of that, Steve reached out, grabbed me by the shirt collar and threw me against his chest.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said, holding his hand against the back of my head, the way I used to do to him when we were younger. But he had been a lot shorter than me back then. Now, he was a little bit taller and we were both old men.

 

Old, damaged, war-weary men.

\--------------------------

Oh my God. I held my hand over my mouth to keep the screams inside. Captain America was standing in my doorway. Steve Rogers was hugging my roommate.

_Wait._

I looked closer at their embrace – Steve’s hand held Bucky behind the head, stroking the back of his hair. Bucky seemed to instantly bury his face into his friend’s chest, gripping tightly onto his shirt. I heard him sigh, and it was happy.

 

Oh my God.

 

What had I just done? I had spent the last 6 months playing with this boy’s emotions, trying to convince myself, and maybe convince him, that he wasn’t gay.

Looking at the way the two of them held each other, it was obvious. 

 

Bucky Barnes _was_ gay, and he was in love with Steve Rogers.

 

“Grace,” Bucky said, pulling away from Steve and pivoting, sliding his arm across the shoulders of his ‘friend,’ squeezing gently on the muscles at the nape of his neck.

“Captain Rogers,” I said, extending my hand. Steve took it into both of his hands, gripping firmly but softly, his eyes not quite at blue as the ones I had gotten used to.

“You’re the one who’s been taking care of my Bucky,” he smiled over at Bucky as he said it and that phrase nearly punched me in the stomach. _His_ Bucky. Not mine.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I smiled forcefully. I was angry at everyone. Angry at Steve for stealing the love of my life and angry at myself for not only letting myself fall for Bucky, knowing he was gay, but also angry at myself for being less than polite to Captain fucking America. Meeting him was supposed to be a dream. Not a nightmare.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Steve replied warmly, still holding my hands.

“It was nothing, really,” I said, with a side glance at Bucky. His expression seem to cloud as he caught mine. “I’ll leave you boys to it, then. Good night,” I said, trying not to run back into my bedroom. The second my door was locked, I leaned against it and let the tears fall from my cheeks.

I was an awful person. I had just gotten my gay roommate drunk enough for him to let me completely take advantage of him.

\--------------------------

As soon as Grace’s door shut – and I mean the _second_ it was shut – Steve turned to me with a sly smile on his face.

“Did I just cock block you?” he grinned with all his teeth. That was uncanny.

“How do you always know?” I asked, throwing my hands in the air as the two of us sat down on the couch. He laughed loudly.

“First of all, your shirt’s on backwards.”

“Ah,” I laughed slightly as I pulled it off and straightened it out.

“Second of all, you’re breathing harder than the Winter Soldier should have to,” he said, a little more softly as I pulled my shirt back on, as if just talking about the fact that I should have more steady control over my faculties made him nervous. As if talking about my becoming the Winter Soldier, a super-soldier just like him, upset him.

“I’m a lot less _him_ than I used to be,” I replied, assuring him that I was still me. I was still his Bucky. Though, I was really wishing he hadn’t phrased it that way. I had just convinced Grace – fairly explicitly – that I wasn’t gay and then Steve fucking Rogers had to burst into the house and call me _his_ Bucky. Not helping, buddy.

I mean, we were closer than what most guys would admit. We hadn’t _just_ been best friends, and we were more than just brothers – we were something indefinable. It wasn’t uncommon for people to assume that we were a couple, and I never really bothered correcting them, because I couldn’t explain in words what we were. The love I had for Steve wasn’t a romantic love, but in the same second, I would’ve done anything for him, anything to protect him, anything to take care of him.

“Sorry for interrupting, in that case,” he said, his face lighting up as soon as he heard me admit that the Winter Soldier and I were becoming more and more separated.

“Just like old times, right Rogers?” I grinned, slapping him on the back.

“You know, I didn’t even expect you to remember my name when you opened that door,” he said, his blue eyes turning cloudy.

“I’ve been remembering a lot lately,” I said, with a quiet smile. “Like how you force fed me overcooked pasta for a week.” His eyes widened, as if surprised that I wasn’t kidding about the extent of my memory return.

“That stove was very hard to figure out,” he rebutted, but I continued.

“I remember saving your ass over and over in high school. I remember that girl you had a crush on in the 8th grade. I remember that night in Brooklyn that our heating went out and you told me you’d kill me if I ever told anyone about sharing a bed. I remember how disappointed your expression was when you saw me in my Army uniform.” They all came spilling out at once. I’d been wondering when Steve would find me, and whether he would remember things the same way I remembered them. I needed him to be my verification, to make sure I wasn’t remembering things that hadn’t happened. As soon as I looked over at him, leaned over with his elbows on his knees, hands folded underneath his chin. His eyes were open, but they were distant, like he was going back through each of those memories on his own.

“I’m pretty sure you told Peggy about us sharing a bed once,” he said, glancing over at me with a raised eyebrow.

“I might have,” I smirked. “She thought it was adorable.”

“Of course she did,” Steve nodded, a sad smile on his lips. I didn’t press about what happened with Peggy, I could assume. He had been frozen for 70 years, just like me, and she hadn’t. She’d been forced to move on and live without him.

 

Now, I had Grace and what did he have?

\-------------------------- 

When I came out of my room – excruciatingly early in the morning, much to the disagreement of my pulsing migraine – the two soldiers were asleep on the couch, both their feet propped up on the coffee table, Bucky’s head had fallen off the top of the couch and onto Steve’s shoulder. I nearly laughed at how they were both wearing the exact same type of boots. They really were made for each other. If I weren’t so heart-broken, it would have been damn near adorable.

I felt slightly guilty about leaving Bucky behind – I was his ride to work. But I planned on telling everyone that he had gotten food poisoning the night before. That was a believable lie. I just hoped Steve wouldn’t be stupid enough to give him a ride anyway.

The morning went by slowly – my students kept asking me what was wrong and where Mr. Barnes was. By that time, I had memorized the spiel and could say it without looking down at the floor, or it getting caught in my throat. _‘He caught a stomach bug last night, but I’m sure he’ll be back tomorrow.’_

By lunch, I was completely numb. Repeating my little speech about how I was just tired and nothing was really bothering me was becoming true. The girls from the bar last night hovered around my class for a while, knowing that Bucky usually showed up to eat lunch with me. Well, they didn’t know that he ate lunch with _me_ , they just knew that he appeared in the building around this area about this time. Honestly, if Bucky and I actually were dating, those girls wouldn’t have cared less. One of them poked their head into my classroom, while the students were outside, and asked _‘Doesn’t he usually ride with you?’_ and I nearly punched her in the throat. Instead, I politely replied with my pre-recorded message about his stomach bug and she gave me a frown before disappearing. At least I was rid of them. If only I could have told her that she was wasting her time.

 

If only I could’ve told myself that in the beginning.

\-------------------------- 

I woke up to the worst crick in my neck. Then I realized it was because I had fallen asleep with my head on Steve’s shoulder.

“Ugh, get off me, jerk,” Steve grumbled as I pushed him to the other side of the couch. He opened a single eye and smiled at me.

“Shut up, punk,” I groaned and I turned my head to the side, rolling my shoulders to try to release the knot in the left side of my … everything.

“What time is it?” Steve asked, squinting from the sunlight coming in from the kitchen windows. My eyes suddenly widened. It shouldn’t be this bright outside.

“Shit, shit, shit.” It came out a half-mumble, half-shout and Steve watched me in amusement as I frantically pulled at the laces on my boots.

“What is it?” he asked as I glanced over at the clock above the sofa.

“It’s 12:30, Steve. I was supposed to be at work four and a half hours ago. Why didn’t Grace wake me up?” I wondered out loud, suddenly feeling a very sharp, panicked pain in my gut. I raced into her room, but it was empty, looking like it usually did when she left it. From her window, I peeked outside toward the driveway. Her little black station wagon was gone. It was safe to assume she hadn’t been taken. She had just … left.

“Buck,” Steve called in worry.

“It’s okay,” I said, letting a sigh out as I walked back. “But I think she left me.”

“What did you _do_ to her last night?” Steve laughed and I punched him in the gut, softly, but with my metal arm. He flinched, still laughing.

“Not nearly as much as I would’ve liked,” I said under my breath. Leave it to Steve to hear it anyway. He laughed harder.

“That was my fault, buddy. Tonight, I’ll make sure to be scarce,” he said, with a wink. I dramatically rolled my eyes.

“Shut up and give me a ride, would ya?” I pushed him toward the door.

The ride to school on the back of Steve’s bike was awkward, to say the least, but not nearly as awkward as the stares we got when we arrived. I really hadn’t thought this through as well as I should have. I forgot that Steve Rogers was a celebrity nowadays.

At least with everyone fawning over him, I was able to slip away. I saw him give me a playful glare once I reached the back of the crowd, and I gave him an overly enthusiastic thumbs up. The look on his face told me that if he hadn’t been surrounded by children, I would’ve gotten the middle finger in return.

For some reason, my heart pounded in my ears as my feet treaded the familiar path to Grace’s classroom. Last night, there was a moment when I thought she had been acting weird. At the time, I had brushed it off as the awkwardness of being interrupted out of the bedroom by Captain America. But then she had left me at home this morning, without even an explanation. Had I done something wrong? Maybe I had pushed her aside for Steve far too quickly. Then again, she had been the one to retreat to her room.

Pretending like everything was normal, I turned the corner to her room and immediately leaned against the doorframe of her classroom just like I always did. Luckily, I had managed to catch her a few minutes before all the kids came running back inside.

She wasn’t looking at the door, waiting for me. She wasn’t eating, there wasn’t even food out in front of her. She was sitting, motionless, her elbows propped up on her desk, and her face resting completely in her hands.

“Grace?” I said, quietly. When she looked up at me, in surprise, her eyes were red.

“Bucky,” she said, immediately plastering a noticeably forced smile on her lips.

 

Oh, God. I had done something very wrong.

\--------------------------

“Bucky,” I said, trying hard to put a genuine smile on my face, but I could feel it coming off as very fake. I couldn’t help it.

“Are you …” he started, but I interrupted before he could ask if I was okay.

“I’m sorry I didn’t wake you up,” I said, injecting cheerfulness into my voice and hoping it was believable. “I was pretty sure you and Steve had stayed up late!” I laughed, but even to me, it sounded forced.

“Grace, did I …” he began to say, his eyebrows furrowed greatly. I interrupted him again. I couldn’t take this game of pretending anymore.

“About last night,” I began. He swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry. It was a really terrible mistake on my part. I was drunk and I shouldn’t have acted on a whim.”

 

His jaw clenched as he opened his mouth to speak.

\--------------------------

“On a whim,” I repeated out loud, not intending to. That’s all I had been to her. A whim. And she let me take advantage of her. On a whim. I had let her get drunk enough to believe that she had feelings for me, when she never really had.

 

This feeling was worse than anything Hydra had ever done to me.

 

I had read her completely wrong. My feelings for her were clouding my perceptions, I was supposed to be better than this. All the times that I thought she had been flirting, she had been treating me like I was her gay best friend. She didn’t still think I was gay, did she? She had been given plenty of contrary evidence last night.

“This doesn’t change our relationship, as it was – does it?” she asked, with genuine concern. She didn’t want a boyfriend. She wanted a gay roommate.

“No,” I said immediately, though I wish I hadn’t responded so quickly. How could I continue to live with the girl I was in love with – who didn’t love me back?

“Did Steve bring you?” she asked with a quiet smile. I nodded.

“Yeah. I didn’t want to miss a whole day of work,” I replied, trying not to show how absolutely shattered I was. I wasn’t sure I could stay for work, now.

“He’s sweet,” she smiled shyly, glancing down at the floor.

 

Oh my God. It hit me like a fucking truck. She was in love with Steve.

\------------------------- 

As soon as I mentioned Steve, there was a strange look on his face. I wasn’t sure of the expression, or the reason it was there, but the thought of Steve should’ve sent a smile to his face. Not this – whatever _this_ was.

“Yeah,” he said, pursing his lips. “I should’ve introduced you two better.”

“We should all go out for dinner tonight,” I suggested, before mentally kicking myself. How could I watch them fawn over each other all night? The answer was, I couldn’t. Not without some back-up. This called for some heavy guns.

“Uh, yeah, if you want,” he said, in a wavering voice. As if he didn’t want his boyfriend to have any sort of lengthy conversation with the girl whose tongue was in his mouth the night before. I could understand how awkward that would be, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to bring it up. That was our secret, it would have to be.

“I’ll invite my friend London, she would love to meet you both.” I couldn’t stand to sit across from them alone the entire evening. Yes, I wanted to support Bucky and his relationship with Steve, but that wouldn’t make it hurt any less.

London was my best friend in high school. Valedictorian. When we graduated, she got a scholarship to a school in D.C. and I couldn’t blame her for taking it. Still, we kept in pretty regular contact, and I had made sure to inform her of everything that was going on with Bucky Barnes. She, more than anyone, understood my obsessions.

Again, his expression was extremely hard to understand. I guess he thought I would bring a date, but I had spent so much time and energy on falling in love with Bucky that there was nobody else in my life. Surely he had noticed that.

 

I guess he had, since he had let me molest him last night. Out of pity, evidently.

\--------------------------

Great, she was trying to set me up with her friend. At least she was nice enough not to leave me alone to watch her flirt with Steve all night.

Maybe her friend was exceedingly nice, and maybe she was a super model, and maybe she had four PhD’s, played seven instruments and volunteered at a soup kitchen.

 

She still wouldn’t be enough to match Grace.

 

“Great,” I replied with a fake smile to match the one she had given me earlier. “I’ll tell Steve and we’ll just meet you both at the fancy Italian place that we like.” I cringed at the word _we_. _We_ , as in Grace and I, who were no longer a _we_ , nor were we ever.

“Eight o’clock?” she asked, and she seemed excited.

“Yeah, sounds good,” I said. I suddenly realized that I couldn’t spend the rest of the day working, here, with everything that I did reminding me of her. “Since you already told the boss I was out sick, I think I’ll just show Steve around town until then.”

“Oh, ok,” she said, though her expression didn’t seem to light up whenever Steve’s name was mentioned. Maybe she finally figured out that I sneered every time she did that.

Maybe she finally figured out that she was breaking my goddamn heart.

\--------------------------  

“How did you talk me into this?” I complained to London as we walked up to the restaurant, tugging at the flared hem of the little black dress that felt too short.

“You look good, you feel good. Simple as that,” she replied with a shrug of her shoulders. She had dolled herself up quite nicely, too. I imagine any sane woman would, who knew that she was going to be meeting Captain America, gay or not.

“But it’s not like he’s going to suddenly realize he’s not gay just because I’m wearing a short dress,” I mumbled.

“It’s not for him. It’s for you. And maybe for me,” she said as she pinched the back of my thigh. I playfully rose a single eyebrow. This was the extent of our relationship. Honestly, we were so close that, in high school, since we were actually together almost all of the time, we got mistaken for a couple more often than not. It didn’t bother us – we knew what we were, even if we couldn’t explain it to anyone else.

Despite what people thought, most of the time, we were actually talking about who had been hotter – Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes. No surprise, she always went with Steve and I always went with Bucky. It was probably why it had been so easy to fall in love with him. Back then, I never thought it would actually happen. Everyone thought Bucky was dead. They thought it about the Captain, too, until they dug him out of the ice.  

“I don’t think I can do this,” I said, turning from the front door and steering around the sharp corner, sliding along the brick wall before throwing my back against it. London came and stood in front of me, taking my face into her hands.

“You have to. You need to come to terms with this. Bucky needs you – even if it’s only as a friend. As much as that totally sucks.” She was right, of course.

“Let’s see how you do when you’re face to face with Steve Rogers and have to remember that _he’s_ also gay.” She sighed heavily.

“Don’t remind me.” We laughed together for a moment, before she took my hand and led me into the restaurant.

 -------------------------- 

“I don’t think I can do this,” I moaned, placing my hand over my forehead as Steve patted me hard on the back. I think I liked him better when he was asthmatic.  

“You have to. Unless you want to quit your job, move to D.C. with me and never, ever see Grace again.” I shook my head violently. I couldn’t live without Grace. Even if I was only her best friend, her ‘gay’ roommate, I would be whatever she needed. She was the female version of Steve. Except that I wanted to do things to her that I definitely didn’t want to do to Steve. Not that it mattered.

I still hadn’t told Steve that I was pretty sure that Grace was in love with him. It hurt me to even say it out loud. Not to mention, Steve had already told me he hadn’t been with anyone since he got thawed – that he was still, deep down, in love with Peggy. There was a very likely chance that Grace was going to get her heart broken. Yet, there was that slim chance that Steve would fall head over heels for Grace. Just like I had.

 

That thought terrified me. Then I would lose both of them at once.

 

“It’s not like she’s going to realize that I’m the man of her dreams just because I’m wearing a suit,” I said, rolling my shoulders in the jacket to alleviate the tightness. Steve had forced me to buy this – a black tie, over a black shirt, under a black jacket and black pants. _‘Isn’t this too much black?’_ I had asked him as I stood in front of the dressing room mirror. He shrugged. _‘Not for the Winter Soldier,’_ he had replied with a laugh. I glared at him. ‘ _Speak of the devil,’_ he mocked the expression on my face with one of his own.

“It’s not for her. It’s for you. And maybe for the friend,” he said, not joking in the slightest as he straightened the lapels of his own Navy blue jacket.

Just then, the door opened, and Grace walked in, followed by a lovely brunette. I say lovely out of courtesy, because I couldn’t pay attention to anything but Grace. She had on a dress that matched the shade of my suit, form-fitted down to the waist and flared out at the bottom, a wide neckline fading out into lace sleeves. It was the shortest dress I’d ever seen her in. My breathing immediately increased.

As she and her friend walked over to the table, I nearly laughed at the fact that London was wearing a nearly identical shade to Steve’s jacket. We were completely mismatched for this double date.

Steve and I stood from our place at the table, and I was surprised when Grace stood at the chair directly across from me. She was polite to a fault.

“Steve,” I elbowed him and we switched sides. The girls noticed, I could tell, because they looked over at each other, expressionless. I wasn’t sure what it meant.

London was pretty enough – long, dark-brown hair pinned up at the back of her head and bright, red lipstick. It was very 1940’s. I appreciated the sentiment, at least.

 

I couldn’t risk looking over at Grace. I wouldn’t be able to look back.

\------------------------- 

As soon as the two of them stood from the table, I nearly turned around and walked out. Bucky was in a suit. An all-black suit. His hair was pulled back into a loose bun, the shorter pieces falling around his bright blue eyes. My breathing immediately increased. I couldn’t handle having him look like this all night.

Despite that, when we got to the table, I stood at the chair across from him. At first, his smile finally showed up, but it vanished pretty quickly and he and Steve switched seats. I tried to pretend I couldn’t actually feel my heart shredding into pieces. London glanced over at me and squeezed my hand knowingly.

Once we all sat, there was a deafening awkward silence that engulfed the table. It was excruciating. Bucky and I never seemed to have a lack for conversation before. All of a sudden, I felt like I couldn’t say anything to him.

“So …” London finally broke it. “You should both be dead.” Steve choked on his water and Bucky stared, gaping.

“London!” I hissed, trying hard not to laugh at how blunt she was. Before I could slap her on the wrist, Bucky and Steve both burst into simultaneous laughter.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Steve let out a short laugh, his eyebrows raised.

“And how are you not?” she asked, in London fashion.

“Cryosleep,” they both replied in synchronicity, smiling at each other afterward.

 

Ugh, they were so perfect for each other, it was sickening.

 

“Mine was accidental,” Steve clarified with an inside-joke smile.

“Mine was forced,” Bucky pursed his lips, but his eyes were still bright, like the time he had spent as the Winter Soldier felt like just another bad memory.

After living together for 6 months, and experiencing countless of his screaming nightmares, I had learned a great deal about what Bucky had done on behalf of Hydra, as the Winter Soldier, or the Asset, or whatever they liked to call him. Many nights we spent sitting on top of his bed – Bucky angrily pouring out the guilt over the things he had done, and me, holding his head to my chest, pulling my fingers through his hair, and reminding him that he and the Winter Soldier were not, had never been the same person.

 

I had to stop thinking about pulling my fingers through his hair.

 

London pelted them with another series of questions, but I got lost in how bright Bucky’s eyes were, over all the black underneath them. With all the dark color of his wardrobe, his hair looked darker, even the stubble on his chin looked darker. The hollows of his cheeks seemed to sink in further, the circles under his eyes seemed heavier, and every cell in my blood and in my bones wanted to go tearing over the table at him.

 

Damn Captain America to hell.

 

London – whether trying to steal Steve for herself, or distract him from how hopelessly I was staring at his date – mentioned something about the song being perfect for learning how to dance and dragged Steve onto the dance floor. Though he argued at first about having two left feet, once she got him going, he looked like he was having the time of his life. I wondered if it was the first time he had ever danced with a girl.

When I looked at Bucky, I don’t know what it was that I expected to see in his expression – maybe jealousy at the girl who was stealing the attention of the boy he had just gotten back – but it wasn’t there. Watching Steve step all over London’s toes and swing her underneath his raised arm, he looked like he might cry, but over a smile so vast it was near immeasurable – not in width, but in depth.

I couldn’t give that to Bucky. I could never make him that happy. But right then, it didn’t matter.  If Steve _could_ , then I was happy to let him. I wanted them both to be happy.

“Shouldn’t you be out there instead?” I asked with a slight smile.

 -------------------------- 

Steve looked happy – happier than I had seen him since 1943. He had his best friend back at his side, and now he was wearing out the soles of his shoes stepping on the toes of a beautiful girl who seemed to enjoy him just as much as he was enjoying her. It was nice to see him smile like that again.

Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced over at Grace. I guess I expected there to be some jealousy in her face over her best friend dancing with the man she was in love with, but there wasn’t. Her smile was completely unmarred – she held none of it back. I imagined it was the same smile that I had, watching Steve act uninhibitedly.

I wasn’t sure I had ever made her smile like that. Everything that happened between us up until yesterday was blurry to me. But I knew that if Steve was the man that was making her smile that brightly, he should have her. Anything to make her happy. Anything to make them both happy. The two people I loved most in the world. Finally, she turned to me, her smile dimming slightly as she said:

“Shouldn’t you be out there instead?” Dancing with London, instead of Steve, so that she could dance with Steve herself. I tried not to let her see my heart break.

“I could say the same about you,” I replied, a half-smile all I could muster.

 -------------------------

“I could say the same about you,” he replied, with what appeared to me to be a forced smile. His jealousy was finally starting to show. He wanted me to go out there and get my London away from his Steve. I couldn’t really blame him.

“Yeah,” I laughed, half-heartedly. “I’ll try to distract London so you can cut in.”

\--------------------------

She phrased that all wrong, but I got the message. Her double-date pairings were not going as she had planned, and she was trying to get me to cut in with London.

I looked for a moment out at the dance floor. It wasn’t that London was anything but gorgeous, and had a beautiful smile, and a hilariously forward personality, but…

She wasn’t Grace. She wasn’t the voice that pulled me from my nightmares. She wasn’t the face that reminded me that I had a home for the first time in 70 years.

 

London wasn’t the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

 

Screw this self-sacrificing thing. Maybe she was in love with Steve. Maybe I would end up with her best friend, and it wouldn’t be all that bad. But I was the Winter Soldier, dammit, and this was my new mission.

“Grace, I can’t keep doing this,” I sighed, running my hand over my face. 

\--------------------------

Oh, no. This was it. He was going to tell me we couldn’t even be friends, after what I had done, that he didn’t want to live with me, he didn’t want to work with me. He was running off to the capital to live with Steve and I would never see him again.

This was not happening. Screw this – screw all of it. If he wanted to be with Steve, then I couldn’t stop him, but I wasn’t about to let him leave me. I needed him.

“No, Bucky, we can still work around it. I made a mistake, and I’m still so sorry, but I don’t want to lose you as a friend, too.”

\--------------------------

A _friend_. Exactly. I didn’t want to lose her as a friend, either. But I couldn’t just stand there and watch her fall in love with my other best friend.

It wasn’t just the word friend. The hardest punching word of that whole sentence was mistake. That’s what I was – a _mistake_.

“Mistake? That’s what you call it?” I snapped, feeling like my whole face was furrowed underneath my eyebrows. It was hard to hear her refer to me that way.

\--------------------------

I _had_ made a mistake – my mistake was assuming that he would forgive me for the way I had treated him the night before. I had taken advantage of the situation.

Wait, no. That wasn’t all there was to it. Sure, I had kissed him first, but he didn’t _have_ to kiss me back – he did that of his own free will, drunk or not.

“Yes. And I’m _sorry_. But I’m _not_ the only one at fault, here,” I snapped back at his near-growl of a question. If he was going to leave, fine, but I was going to speak my piece.

\-------------------------- 

She was blaming it on me? I wasn’t the one who just referred to her as a mistake. I wasn’t the one who kissed her first. I wasn’t the one who tried to play it off like nothing happened. I wasn’t the one in love with her best friend.

This woman was infuriating me. It was how I knew I loved her so goddamn much.

“No, you’re right,” I replied sarcastically. “Oh, wait, no. Because _I’m_ not the one who wanted to pretend like nothing happened so I could bed your best friend.” 

\--------------------------

What the hell was he talking about? The only reason I had to pretend like nothing happened was because I knew _he_ was in love with someone else. _His_ best friend.

“I pretended like nothing happened so _you_ could bed your best friend!” I nearly shouted, but trying to keep my voice down so I wouldn’t inform the whole restaurant of his gay relationship with Steve Rogers.

Immediately, he sat back, his eyes wide.

\--------------------------

So _I_ could bed _my_ best friend? So _I_ could be with _Steve_?

She needed to quit with pretending I was gay – she knew how bad I had it for her.

“I’m not the one in love with Steve. You are,” I clarified bitterly as I stood from the table, the chair beneath me scraping sharply on the floor. It felt like everyone in the restaurant turned to look as I walked out the front door.

\------------------------- 

For several long seconds, I sat back in complete shock. Bucky thought that I was in love with Steve? Was he just using me as an excuse, as a cover? What did it matter? I already knew he was gay. Adding Steve to his equation was just common sense.

After waving off questioning glances from both London and Steve, and nearly everyone else in the restaurant, I followed after Bucky outside.

Not surprisingly, I found him hiding around the corner, leaning against the side of the building, a cigarette in between his lips, his head fallen backward against the bricks. His neck created a long contour, acting as a bridge that led the smoke that swirled out from his lips to pool around the collar of his black suit jacket.

“You think I’m in love with Steve?” I practically screamed. He looked over, less than surprised to find that I had followed him.

“Of course you are. Everyone is,” he mumbled, the cigarette bouncing between his teeth as he spoke. I reached up and pulled it out of his mouth, stomping it under my heel.

“I’m not everyone, Bucky,” I argued, pulling his face so he would look at me, which he did, while pivoting so that he was standing in front of me, the wall behind me.

“No, you _are._ Everything was perfect until Steve showed up,” he snarled at the name of his best friend, which brought up an entirely new set of questions, but none more pressing than the point I needed to make next.

“Everything was perfect? I pushed myself on you, Bucky, because I thought I could convince you that you weren’t gay and you were drunk enough to let me!” I shouted, leaning further into his face and then convincing myself to back off.

“I’m not even capable of getting drunk, Grace,” he yelled back, getting close enough to me to back me into the wall. “And I’m not gay.”

“That’s bullshit,” I shook my head. I didn’t know what he was trying to do, but he needed to quit lying to me. “I saw the way Steve held you in my living room. I saw you collapse into his arms. I saw you both asleep together on the couch.” He looked away, shaking his head furiously. I just stood there, knowing he had no way to argue those facts.

“Steve is like family to me. I love the man, immensely, but …” He paused, as if not sure how to explain it. But he stopped, his expression changed. “Wait, if you think that I’m in love with Steve, then you think Steve’s gay, too?”

“Of course. You’re a couple.” The tension in his brow released.

“So you’re really not in love with Steve?” he asked. I sighed heavily.

“No! I’m not in love with Steve! I’m in love with _you_ , you jackass!” I shouted into his face before realizing the words that had just flown out of my mouth were in real time.

 

Great idea. Confess to your homosexual best friend that you’re in love with him.

 

The defensive position of his shoulders fell as he stared at me, jaw slack. Before I could make any attempt at taking it back, Bucky’s hands shot out from his sides, his left sliding along my waist, his right wrapped warmly around my neck. And he pulled me hard against him, his lips colliding heavy to mine, our teeth knocking together as he slid his tongue in between the chaos. I allowed myself a moment to revel in it, then pulled away.

“Stop, Bucky. Stop,” I said breathlessly, holding my hands to his chest.

“No,” he said, pressing my mouth open with his.

“But Steve,” I said into the little pockets of empty air my voice could find. Bucky seemed to find all those pockets right after me and fill them with his mouth. With less than sentences, and sometimes hardly words, I tried to form my dissent for being pitied by him, knowing that he was meant for Steve Rogers. Finally, he stopped.

“Grace,” he said, simply, forcing my eyes to maintain his, “I have been in love with you since day one. You had me at ‘Get back here, you little shit,’.” My laugh fell directly onto his lips and he breathed it in. “Every time you pushed my hair behind my ear, I wanted to kiss you. The way you like to prop your leg up on my hip while I’m crouched in the grass, I can’t tell you how badly I want to run my hand up your skirt. Last night was everything I had ever wanted to happen, including getting Steve back, but I only wish he had given me a few hours more with you, in the dark, on your bed. Or on the floor. Or on top of the kitchen table. Christ,” As he spoke, his breathing sped up and he slid his tongue out to wet his lips before pressing everything back into my mouth.

“Why have you been lying to me all this time?” I demanded as his grip expanded to my hips and he laid himself against me and the brick wall behind me.

“I was trying to be the hero. The first day we met, Hydra was trying to take me back. I had no way to know if they would try again, and whether you would try to stop them. They would kill you to get to me.” He spoke in fragments, getting his lips back to mine with every break in his words.

“What changed?” I asked as he moved down my throat.

“I don’t give a damn about Hydra anymore. I won’t let them hurt you. Besides,” he said, his eyes traveling down my neckline. “You _had_ to show up in this dress,” he growled with his lips pressed against my collarbone, both hands sliding up the backs of my legs. I inhaled sharply at the touch of his cold, metal fingers, but thankfully, he didn’t stop.

“Me? Are you kidding?” I huffed. “What about _you_ , in this goddamn suit? Jesus, Bucky.” I pulled at the knot of his tie, loosening it – though not nearly as much as I wanted to. It was evidently enough for him, because he shoved his lips back up into mine, throwing my head back toward the brick wall with the force, though his right hand had already reached up to be the cushion between them.

Suddenly, he pulled back, looking full into my face. Then, just like all the nights after I had found him screaming in his sleep, he closed his eyes and pressed his forehead softly to mine, finding the rhythm of my breathing, to harmonize with his own.

“Take me home, Grace,” he sighed with an undemanding smile.

 -------------------------- 

With Grace’s fingers wound tightly into my own, I pulled her back into the restaurant, our smiles mirrored on each other’s faces. Steve and London were just settling back down at the table, laughing and breathing heavy – London fanned herself with a menu and I wasn’t sure if it was from the dancing or from the way Steve was looking at her. Grace’s eyes found mine and we both wore the same knowing expression.

Just as Steve pushed in London’s chair, he happened to glance our way, so I waved him over as Grace took his place at the table, sitting next to London. As soon as the two of them started whispering, I saw London sit straight up and find me in the crowd.

 

I waved politely, with a raised brow. She threw her head back in laughter.

 

“Steve, I need you to take London home,” I squeezed Steve’s shoulder as he stood in front of me. He licked his bottom lip and tucked it into his teeth.

“Oh, I intend to,” he said, glancing at her over his shoulder. I laughed.

“Jesus, Steve. When did you become such a horndog?” He just grinned at me.

“First of all, people don’t say that anymore, evidently. Second, you’re one to talk. What exactly happened out there?” he asked a smug grin as his eyes traveled from my disheveled hair down to my crooked tie. I straightened it with a smirk.

“Let’s just say I’ve been telling a lie that I need to prove untrue,” I watched Grace unwaveringly as she rose from the table, met by a sharp spank by her best friend – Grace didn’t even flinch, like a football player who had just scored a touchdown.

 

I beamed. Grace considered a roll in the sheets with me as a score.

 

Damn right.

 

“Have fun, buddy,” Steve said with an overt wink as Grace pulled me back toward the door. I laughed and reached out my metal arm for a fist bump.

“You, too. Don’t break any bones, Rogers.” He scoffed.

“Super soldier, Buck,” he said, gesturing down his torso.

“I meant hers,” I called and I heard London laughing from the table.

 

When we had been walking to the car, Grace had pressed the keys into my palm, and pressed her lips to my ear to say, “You’re driving.” At the time, I had wondered why. I was concerned about my ability to keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel, but as soon as we were away from the lights of the restaurant, I discovered her reasons.

The instant the car was covered in the darkness of the back roads, Grace pulled back the console that separated us, leaned over and pressed her wet lips to my ear. My knuckles went white on the steering wheel as I took in a sharp, hitched breath. I still wasn’t used to being allowed to have her tongue in my ear. Fuck, it was fantastic.

Her fingers wrapped around my neck and pulled at the band in my hair until it was loose, then she pushed them up through my hair from the back of my neck. I think I even felt the shudder run through my left arm. As if that was a sign to continue, she moved her other hand from the edge of my seat to my leg, sliding her fingers along the inside of my thigh. Without really consciously intending to, I shifted and my legs spread further. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her raised eyebrows and the devious grin on her face.

God, I could hardly stand it. I wanted to pull over and drag her into the backseat.

She let her fingers drift further up – excruciatingly slowly – so I slid down into my seat to meet them. At the contact, her grip tightened, her fingers curling between me and the seat underneath – all the while, her lips traveled from my ear, down my neck, across my cheek. I couldn’t hold it in – a moan left my lips, louder than I expected.

“Oh, my _God_ , Grace,” I pined in a shaky voice, aching for her touch against my bare skin. At the desperate sound of my voice, she let out a long, warm breath into my ear. It only made it worse – my muscles thrummed and tensed against her.

“We’re almost there, Buck,” she said in a low voice, and I knew that she meant we were almost home, but that’s _really_ not how I took it. Not to mention, she had _never_ called me Buck before – like she had been saving it for such an occasion. It drove me out of my mind. Only Steve had ever called me Buck, and as seemingly gay as that was, I considered it a very personal, intimate nickname. Hearing _her_ say it, in _that_ tone – my every vessel was pulsing, throbbing to get her to say it again.

“ _I’m_ going to be _there_ in a few minutes if you keep this up,” I growled and she laughed, pulling her hand away, but dragging her fingertips along my length as she did. I rolled my head up toward the roof of the car, letting out a long, slow breath.

“Is that all it takes?” she laughed, her voice was deeper and softer than it had been at the restaurant and I wanted her to speak to me in that voice forever.

“With you, yeah. I’ve got 6 months of frustration and aggression to get out, thanks to you,” I swallowed hard as I looked over at her as she settled back into her seat, the flared hem of her already short dress inching up her thighs.  “And that … dress.”

\-------------------------- 

His eyes ran over every stitch along the hem of my dress. A week ago, I would’ve blushed, but today, I just wanted him to put his hands where his eyes were focused on. Considering I had practically just given him a handjob, I didn’t imagine that he still felt trapped by the awkward borders that had been between us for the last 6 months. Still his hands remained on the wheel, his right hand knuckles so white, they nearly glowed in the dark. Even his left, metal fingers looked like they might splinter apart – there was already a sizeable imprint on that side of the steering wheel.

I tucked my legs underneath me, turning toward him so I could lean my head on the edge of my seat and watch him drive. It was still damn near unbelievable to me that James Buchanan Barnes was driving my station wagon home, that his skin was flushed because of me, that he had only admitted a few minutes ago that he was in love with me. It felt like I had only just been in high school, doodling his name on all my notebooks.

 

Now, I would be doing the same thing, on my lesson planner.

 

Just as I had begun to think that his excitement had died down, he calmly reached over and placed his hand, the one still flesh and blood, on my knee. First, he pressed his palm flat against my skin and pushed it around in a wide circle. At the top of this circle, his fingers skirted up underneath the hem of my dress and, though he wasn’t looking at me, he cocked his head to one side, letting out a short breath. His hand stopped there for a moment before he drove it forward with a tighter grip, reaching the side of my hip with his fingertips pressing deep into the outer muscles of my thigh.

He twisted his wrist slightly and suddenly his fingers brushed along the crease where my legs lay pressed together. As he spread them out, they met with the lace underwear I had been smart enough to wear and he let out a strange breath that sounded much like an elongated, drawn out “Oh.” At the sound of _his_ voice in _that_ form, and with his fingers finding new depth in the space between my legs, I couldn’t hold my own voice in. A shaking, sighing moan slipped out with an exhale and it might have been in the shape of his name.

“Ok, I can’t do it,” he said, immediately pulling his hand away from me while slamming on the brakes. At first, I panicked, afraid that I was on the receiving end of his pity again. He pulled onto an abandoned dirt road and flew out of the driver’s seat. All I could do was to get out to meet him, as he raced to my side of the car. I nearly asked him what was wrong, what I had done, but he slammed me up against the car, pulling my leg up to wrap around his hips as his lips violently tore into mine. Even with his hips pressed so hard into mine, he managed to maneuver me past the back door and pry it open, without opening his eyes or letting his lips fall from mine, except to say “Get in.”

I followed the order and scooted along the seat – Bucky followed quickly after, shutting the door behind him. When I turned to him, he lunged at me, shoving me down onto the backseat just by pushing his mouth hard against mine. It was all tongue, like he was trying to see how far he could get it in. He rotated his hips a few times, nestling down between my legs, and I could feel every twitch of every part of his body.

Watching – _feeling –_ him do that was nearly enough to finish me.

 His right hand was around my throat, but only for a second before it traveled down over my breasts, dragging down my waist and my hips to get to the hem of my dress. Once there, he pushed up, letting his fingers trail slowly along my inner thigh before he reached the place he was aiming for. His touch was light, careful, at first, but the heavier my breathing became, the quicker the pace of his fingers became.

“Jesus _Christ_ , Bucky,” I moaned into his mouth.

“You have a dirty mouth for a Catholic school teacher,” he laughed, and in retaliation, I reached down and groped him with a heavy hand, his laugh quickly falling down into a hard lip bite. “Oh, fuck me,” he growled as his tongue again went quickly into the back of my throat. As if we were having a race to see who would come first, he pushed the lace aside, making matching circles with his fingers in one wet place and with his tongue in another. Feeling sure that he was about to win, I quickly unfastened his belt, frantically pulling his shirt from underneath the waist of his pants and replacing it with my hand, sliding it down his abdomen until I reached erect skin.

His breathing caught at my soft touch – and when I wrapped my fingers firmly around him, pushing and pulling in the same rhythm he was working his fingers, a long series of mumbled Russian came pouring out from his lips, sinking with his breath into my mouth. His metal hand, that he had been keeping conspicuously reserved, slid underneath my dress and he ripped the lace fabric that was keeping him from me. At the same time, I slid his boxers down to his thighs, taking a moment to appreciate the spectacular view. My hand remained tight on him. The Russian got faster.

 

I wondered what he was saying, but only for a moment as he shoved his hips against mine, and he was fully pressed into me. I swore he said my name.

\-------------------------- 

If this was some sort of contest over who was going to make the other come first, I was pretty sure the victory would go to her. She barely even had to touch me. She just had to say my name in that breathy moan and I was undone.

I wondered if the Russian scared her. She didn’t seem scared. The only time she ever heard me speak Russian was in my nightmares. I generally tried to keep it from her. But at her less than timid touch, I fucking lost my mind. I had a thousand things I wanted to say to her, but I didn’t want her to hear any of it. Not yet. The rough translation of what was coming out of my mouth was a little like: “Holy mother of God, Grace, _fuck_ me. Goddammit, I am so in love with you. I want the taste of you on my tongue for the rest of my fucking life and I want to put my cock between your teeth and I want you to be my wife and I wish I was brave enough to say this in English.”

Maybe I was imagining it, but I was pretty sure her grip on me increased once the Russian was introduced. That only gave me more to say. Mostly just ‘ _fuck’_ over and over.

In my fury, I tore the lace from underneath her dress and I hardly noticed. I don’t think she even noticed. With her free hand, she slipped my boxers down my legs, the other hand still working me, and I pushed into her hips, her fingertips guiding my way in.

Once my hips were flush with hers, she moaned my name. “God, Buck.” In response, I thrust harder, practically using the door against my feet as a springboard.

“Say it again,” I requested in English as she pulled the jacket from my shoulders. I saw where she was going and I needed it as bad as she did. I pulled her dress over her head, only slightly more carefully than I had the last article of clothing.

“Jesus, Buck,” she said louder into my ear as she yanked the buttons of my shirt, a few of them flying off into the darkness. Once the shirt was off, I pressed her to my bare chest, using the opportunity to snap the clasp of her bra. As soon as it fell, I had my hands on her, squeezing and kneading and pressing.

“Say it again,” I demandingly growled as I pulled her breast to my mouth, all while pumping my hips against hers in an increasingly rapid rhythm. She moaned in perfect harmony to each thrust, giving me an _“Oh, God, Bucky,”_ that rose in volume until it was nearly a scream. As she wound her fingers into my hair, pulling tightly, she opened her mouth, not a sound coming out and I covered her open mouth with my own, settling my teeth tightly onto her lower lip. With that last push, the bottom fell out from underneath me – every muscle tensed, every neuron fired, and I felt like my entire blood volume circulated my whole body a dozen times in an instant. By the press of her nails into my back, and their subsequent release, I was pretty sure our competition of who would outlast the other had ended in a tie. I collapsed onto her bare chest, taking in a full survey of everything – the texture of our skin stuck together, the way our restless breathing fell in time, the faint, lingering scent of department store perfumes that clung to the new dress and had transferred to her bare skin, the feel of her exposed breast against my lips, the hanging humidity that we had created together in the backseat of her station wagon.

“God, I love you, James Buchanan,” she sighed breathlessly.

 

I closed my eyes, smiling. “Likewise.”

 

She tucked my hair behind my ear.

 

\-------------------------- One year later --------------------------

 

“Ok, someone tell me what the assignment is for Monday!” I shouted over the shuffling of papers and the zipping of backpacks.

“Chapter 14 homework,” I heard several of my students groan.

“Thank you!” I called as they rushed out past me.

“Hey, James!” I heard several of them say on the way out. _James,_ I laughed. If only they knew the things I called him at home. The Winter Sex Machine was my favorite.

“Weekend homework?” I heard Bucky’s voice dramatically complained as I turned. “Your teacher is the worst.” He winked quickly at me from where he stood, leaning in the doorframe, the same way he did every day.

“If you think their homework is bad, wait until I give you yours,” I said under my breath as the last student left the room. With a single raised eyebrow, he bit down on his bottom lip. As I watched the group of kids round the corner, I gave him the ‘come here’ motion with my finger and he quickly closed the gap between us, lifting me up on top of a desk, pulling my legs around his hips and sliding his tongue along mine. Stealing kisses in between classes, especially torrid ones like this, was Bucky’s favorite part of the day. He practically made it a challenge to see how often he could get away with it. His record to date was 27, though, he gave himself bonus points if he could get his hand up my skirt. Sometimes I gave him bonus points by not wearing anything underneath them.

“What’s my homework, then?” he asked, pulling at the buttons on my shirt, and kissing down my chest, biting softly on the skin along the edge of my bra.

“Try to keep your hands off me when Steve and London come over for dinner tonight,” I grinned as he let out a loud groan, but his face remained buried in my chest.

“Can’t they have dinner at their own house?” he laughed, his lips buzzing against my skin. I pushed his hair back behind his head.

“You haven’t seen Steve in a week, Buck. You’re going through withdrawals,” I laughed loudly, but the sound of footsteps down the hall sent Bucky shooting back up to a standing position as I pulled myself from the desk, hurriedly closing my shirt.

The principal waved as he walked past. We casually waved back. As soon as his footfalls were out of Bucky’s hearing range, he went back to manhandling me.

“Alright, so I miss him,” he grumbled, his hands getting lost in the folds of my long skirt. “Either way, you’re gonna have to wear a shorter skirt than this, so I can at least make you squirm.” He ran his tongue over his teeth in a completely filthy expression.

“You know I have a bad poker face,” I warned. “Steve is going to know.”

“So let him know,” he waved off, biting the nape of my neck. “It’s not like it’s a secret, Gracie. The wedding’s in 3 months.”

“I still can’t believe we’re getting married and the faculty still doesn’t even know we’re together,” I laughed, pulling at his belt loops.

“And the boss still thinks I’m gay,” he huffed into my neck. “He’s not very bright, is he? I mean, I’ve had my hand between your legs sitting across the table from him.”

“I should still kill you for that,” I pulled sharply on his hair, but it only made his grip on me tighten. He nuzzled his chin hard against my collarbone.

“You can pay me back tonight after Steve and London leave.”

“Oh, no, sweetheart,” I laughed deviously. “I’m going to leave you hard _all_ night long, company or no company.”

“ _Oh,”_ he moaned into my skin. “Oh my God, Gracie,” he laughed, but the octave of his voice lowered, his hands folding up the layers of my skirt so he could slide them underneath it. “And all this time, I didn’t think I could love you any more.” As his fingers reached my hips – my bare hips, I was teasing him today – he cocked an eyebrow and slid me toward the edge of the desk.

 

\-------------------------- 3 months later --------------------------

 

“Steve, Steve,” I said, tugging on his suit jacket. He turned, pointing the camera much too close in my face. With a laugh, I pushed it off to one side – with my left arm.

“Are they here?” he asked with a mischievous grin, pulling the camera back up to my face, but at a much safer distance from my cybernetic arm.

“Yeah, they all came together, just like they said,” I could hardly contain my excitement. This was going to be so much fun.

The three young, blonde teachers that occasionally like to pin me down in the hallways on the way to Grace’s classroom led the pack, followed by the principal and a few of the other teachers from the school.

With a giant grin, I swung open the church door. The girls in front were the first to see me – their eyes lit up at the sight of me in a suit. I wasn’t blind to their affection. In fact, Grace often told me that I was unnecessarily cold toward them – though that usually just spurred their fangirl behavior. It was annoying and ridiculous.

“James!” they gushed simultaneously. In passing, I had mentioned that I would be at Grace’s wedding when I overheard them talking about it. Everyone had been surprised by Grace’s oral invitation – she had never even brought a real date to a Christmas party. Which was _technically_ true, I _wasn’t_ her date to the party. Except that I had been the one to bed her at the end of the last one.

 

Bed was really not the right verb, considering I had fucked her in her classroom.

 

Anyway, because of the mystery of his (my) identity, they were all excited to meet her groom – she only told them his (my) name was Bucky.

“Are you an usher?” one of them squealed as the other two gave me the up-and-down with their eyes. I grinned. This was it.

“The groom, actually.” I felt like my face was splitting in half from the width of my smile. Immediately, their expressions fell.

“What?” one of them hissed loudly, the others looking confused and destroyed.

“But you’re gay!” Principal Nelson shouted. The girls spun around to face him.

“What?” they screamed in unison. I glanced back at the camera Steve was holding and gave him a wink. He was nearly doubled over in laughter.

“Yeah, that was bullshit. Grace and I have been living together …” I began.

“And sleeping together,” Steve added through his laugh.

“Yes, thank you, Steve. And _sleeping_ together, for a year and a half,” I beamed at my secret finally being out. The girls looked utterly devastated. Behind me, Steve was having the time of his life. I really couldn’t fault him for it.

“B-b-but … then who the hell is Bucky?” he stammered nervously. Steve and I actually laughed out loud over that one for a long time. It shouldn’t have been as funny as it was, considering the terrible circumstance it reminded us of.

“Bucky is short for Buchanan, my middle name.”

“Because, in fact,” Steve gladly chimed in, “He’s not just _named_ after Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, he actually _is_ Sergeant Barnes.”

“I’m 97 years old,” I shrugged, like it was no big deal. After a few moments of sheer confusion and near panic, the old man finally composed himself enough to speak.

“You realize this means you’re out of a job,” he said, clearing his throat, as if re-asserting his non-existent authority.

“Oh, he won’t be out of a job. He’s already been offered a new position,” Steve assured him with an overly strong pat on the back. The poor man nearly fell forward.

“A new position?” he choked out.

“He’s an Avenger now,” Steve beamed and, as if on cue, Tony Stark appeared between us, putting his arms around both our shoulders.

“Gentleman,” he said to us, giving a nod to the shocked group standing there, mouths hanging wide open. “Natasha is getting hungry and Clint is trying to find a way to get to the rafters. Let’s get this party going before Bruce gets impatient, too.”

“Yeah, I’d rather not have the church get destroyed,” I reasoned and Steve nodded in agreement. The faculty continued to stare.

“What about Grace?” Nelson suddenly asked.

“Considering this my resignation, too,” I heard her voice from behind me, and I thought for a long time about not turning around. But she squeezed in between Tony and me, sliding her arm around my waist. The girls looks completely horrified.

I let my eyes travel down the dress that I hadn’t yet seen – it was white, but with a slightly pink hue, with short lace sleeves, connecting across her chest. She was stunning.

“Isn’t it bad luck for me to see you before the wedding?” I smiled.

“It _is_ the wedding. Besides, did you think I was going to miss _this_?” she asked, tapping one of the girls underneath the chin of her gaping mouth.

“ _God_ , I love you,” I growled, pushing my lips hard against hers, holding her purposefully low on her waist. Alright, so it wasn’t so much holding her waist as it was grabbing her ass. And I was pretty sure I heard one of the girls gasp ever so softly.

“Alright, save it for the honeymoon,” Tony grinned, lightly pecking Grace on the cheek before heading back to the row of Avengers.

“Wait, wait, wait. So you’re leaving now, too?” Poor Mr. Nelson looked like his whole life was falling apart as he turned his wide eyes to Grace.

“Afraid so. I go where he goes,” she said with a wink in my direction. I was already ready to get this whole ceremony over so I could tear that dress off with my teeth.

“And I go where he goes,” I said, pointing with my thumb over my shoulder at Steve Rogers, whose resulting smile nearly blinded me.

“Aw, Buck. Maybe I should be standing up there with you, instead of Grace,” he nuzzled his face to my cheek, while I tried to push him away. Behind him, I heard a loud smack and his hips flinched forward as London came around with her hand raised.

“Not on your life, Rogers,” she said, tucking her finger into his collar and pulling him down to where she could kiss him. He hummed contentedly on her lips.

“Yes, _ma’am_ ,” he said, scooping the small girl into his giant arms.

“Guys!” a loud voice came from the sanctuary doors. We all turned to look. Sam stood there smiling, dramatically pointing to his watch. “Hurry … _the fuck_ … up.”

“Don’t make me power kick you again, Falcon, because I will enjoy it,” I said, pointing a metal finger in his direction. He pointed his middle back in mine.

“He’s right, I’m ready to dance,” London said, ushering the small crowd toward Sam, who corralled them into their seats.

 

Once everyone was out of the way, I turned to Grace and softly took her face into my hands. Though she closed her eyes, like we always both did, I kept mine open – memorizing the way her eyelashes fluttered nervously behind her closed lids, the deep, subdued color of her lips, the subtle pink flushing of her porcelain cheeks.

 

I was so goddamn ready for this woman to be my wife.

 

Finally, I closed my eyes, listening carefully to the cadence of her breaths and synchronizing my own with them. The air that we breathed out was the same air that we breathed in. Though the nightmares were now rare, she still liked me to hold her like this, to remind me that she was my anchor – the one who kept me sane.

Our eyes opened together, and she smiled at me. I kissed her gently before placing her hand into Steve’s, as he was going to be the one to walk her down the aisle. She had asked my best friend to be the one to give her away to me. It was perfect.

I turned to make my way down the aisle, to stand at my place at the end and wait for Steve to bring her to me. Just as I was nearly out of earshot, I heard her whisper. When I turned with a consuming smile, she bit her lip and winked at me. Guess what she said.

 

“Get back here, you little shit.”


End file.
